


in place of abel

by nasri



Category: Being Human (UK), The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 23:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5109794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasri/pseuds/nasri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s certainly not love but he’ll call it ruin, anyway. At least then they’ll both agree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in place of abel

**Author's Note:**

> My timeline is a right mess. Sorry in advance.

Anders doesn’t sleep. Not naturally anyway, not the way most people do, the way Mike does, playing house in the suburbs. He either snorts enough blow off the plastic sink of a shitty club to keep him going for days or he slowly drinks himself to sleep on his sofa, one glass at a time.  
  
He is, regrettably, getting slightly too old to be licking ecstasy tablets out of the mouths of first year university students on a nightly basis, so more often than not he succumbs to an alcoholic haze and falls asleep with a bottle of paracetamol left on his pillow.  
  
Still, there are nights where he can’t stand it, the taste of vodka on his tongue or the radio of static that keeps him awake. Tonight, he is torn between finding a bar to slowly waste away in and the smell of ash trees from the nearby park, an early autumn. He’s not sure if it’s Bragi who wishes to run his fingers over the bark or if it’s his own sudden craving.  
  
Either way, Anders resists and heads for the nearest pub, a rundown, repurposed building with its windows tarred shut. Its appearance never does it justice though, as Anders happens to know they serve the best imported bourbon in central Aukland. He takes a seat at the bar without glancing around and orders, giving the bartender a half smile.  
  
“Are you waiting on someone?” She asks, though she doesn’t look terribly interested in hearing his answer.  
  
“No,” he says. “I’m working. I needed a break and a change of scenery.” It is partially true. He should be working on his client’s newest ad campaign but he and Bragi both have stalled and stuttered in the creative department and frankly right now he can’t be bothered.  
  
He sips his drink and scrolls through his phone, only glancing up when a game of darts dissolves into loud, drunken laughter. As the victor turns towards the bar Anders’ eyes widen. He is unreasonably attractive, dressed in all black, jeans sitting low on his hips. He looks an absolute mess but he laughs with his head thrown back and he speaks with an Irish lilt that whispers something beautiful in the back of his mind.  
  
Ordinarily, Anders would be at his side, offering to buy him a drink within seconds of seeing him but honestly, he doesn’t have the energy for that. Instead he watches, his chin propped up on his hand, and he listens.  
  
He politely refuses their offer of a rematch and quickly returns his glass to an empty corner table as the crowd disperses. He sighs, patting himself down for a pack of cigarettes. Anders’ staring becomes just slightly too obvious so he turns back around, his elbows resting on the bar. He looks young and alive with eyes out of a fucking painting. Anders doubts that sleep will come easy tonight, but having someone that beautiful in his bed until dawn would likely keep the edge off of his exhaustion.  
  
He takes an experimental glance behind him, but he is already gone and Anders sighs his regrets into the bottom of his glass.  
  
He nods once to the bartender before he goes, and breathes in autumn air. He tucks his hands into his pockets, and decides to take a detour to the park after all, before he is stopped by a soft, “Can I offer you a cigarette?” He looks much older now, leaning back against wall with his hair pushed behind his ears. Anders thinks perhaps he misjudged his age as his eyes sweep over the line of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw.  
  
“No thanks,” he says. “I don’t smoke. Not cigarettes, anyway,” he clarifies, gesturing vaguely at his hand. He sees very little point in poisoning himself if he doesn’t at least get a high from the deal.  
  
“Pity,” he murmurs, grinding his heel into the pavement. “Here I thought I’d manage to keep you around a bit longer.”  
  
Anders isn’t exactly used to being on the receiving end of pickup lines so he laughs, quite loudly, before covering his mouth with his hand. “Sorry, sorry. You’re - I’m not that kind of bloke, really. How about this? You tell me how far away you live, and I’ll tell you how far away I live. Then, we pick the closest flat. Very little hassle.”  
  
He smiles, just a hint predatory, and steps forward, resting a hand along Anders’ hip. “I’m afraid I’m very far out.”  
  
“Mine it is- " He cuts Anders off with an open mouthed kiss and shoves him back against the wall. “Well you’re in a rush,” Anders says into his ear, gripping his shoulders as he runs his tongue down his jawbone. “But I can work with that.”  
  
He doesn’t respond. Instead he pulls away with apparent reluctance and reaches for Anders’ belt, tugging him into the shadows of a nearby fire escape. He inhales deeply at his temple and kisses a slow line down Anders’ throat, pausing just below his pulse point before he bites down, hard. Anders gasps, his hands tightening to fists on his shoulders, his head falling hard against the brick. Fractals of white branch through his vision and Anders can’t manage to pull himself away from the fingers digging bruises into his ribcage.  
  
“Stop,” he gasps, Bragi slipping through his teeth. “Let go of me.” It loosens his grip for just a moment, long enough for Anders to shove him back and press his fingers to his throat. His eyes and mouth are stained black in the low light.  
  
“Leave,” Anders rasps, collapsing against the wall. Bragi breathes life into his voice, and the man turns and he runs down the alleyway. Anders isn’t sure how long he stays, leaning heavily against the brick. He keeps his hand pressed to the side of his neck until well after the blood flow has stalled and his fingers stick to his skin. When he finally manages to stumble out into the street, it's on unsteady legs. He makes it home, unlocking his door with shaking fingers, and for the first time in a long time, Anders sleeps.  
  
—  
  
It's three days before he wakes for more than fifteen minute intervals. He remains sedated, rem deep, like he hasn’t been since he was a teenager, since before Bragi began chatting away in the back of his head and never quite stopped. He doesn’t dream, he doesn’t toss or wake to sweat slicked hair and tangled sheets. He closes his eyes at dawn and wakes to rain, gazing at his bedroom window for a few spans of a breath until he is asleep again.  
  
When Anders does finally manage to pull himself out of bed he feels as close to human as he thinks he will ever get. He forgoes coffee for bottled water and sits at his kitchen table, staring at his fish tank. He wonders if this is how Dawn feels every morning, if her head is quiet and calm without the frayed radio static that plays in Anders’ ears.  
  
He doubts it. Normal people cannot possibly be this lucky.  
  
He finishes the bottle and sets bread in the toaster before returning to his bedroom for his mobile. He finds it tucked among the folds of his sheets, a smear of blood dried across the screen. He plugs it in, rubbing it down with a dishcloth, and watches as messages flash past in rapid succession.  
  
He takes a deep breath, and holds the phone to his ear. “Hey Dawnsie, how’re you doing?”  
   
—  
  
He’s not sure what he expected, not really. Perhaps it was wishful thinking when he crawled under his sheets at ten to midnight, freshly showered with a book in his hand, dimming the lamp on his bedside table but keeping it bright enough to read by.  
  
He finishes the book before four. He doesn’t sleep.  
  
The sun is beginning to rise before he breaks out the vodka. He texts Dawn, warning her that he’ll be late, and pours himself a taller glass than he really needs. Anders has always been an addict at heart, and now he’s had a taste of feeling somewhat close to human, feeling awake and aware and for a moment, content. He is not willing to give up just yet.  
  
—  
  
“Anders,” Michelle sighs his name.  
  
“No really, I do in fact have a legitimate medical question.” He is sitting on a white hospital chair, his arms folded along the back, watching as she fills out forms on an ancient looking computer screen.  
  
“If your question is to do with sex I will strap you down and begin the slow and arduous process of chemically castrating you.“  
  
“Only chemically?” He asks. “You know what, never mind. That’s not why I’m here. I’m interested in donating blood.”  
  
“You hate blood,” she says, without looking up.  
  
“I can handle needles well enough.” Few things could be farther from the truth. “It’s not like I’ll be seeing the blood anyway. I want to know how often I can get it done, how safely.”  
  
“Four times a year.”  
  
“That’s-“ He pauses, frowning. “Not very often at all.”  
  
“Nope.” She types a series of prescriptions into a text box.  
  
“Well that’s interesting. You could probably give more though, right, realistically?”  
  
Michelle sighs, abandoning her keyboard in favour of rubbing at her eyes with what really must be exaggerated frustration. “Anders, I do have work to do.”  
  
“Yeah I know, I’m almost done. I can’t go ask around blood clinics because they’ll convince me right then and there. Between you and me, I’m not ready for that level of commitment. It just seems that four times a year is- ” he pauses at _impossible_.  
  
“Four a year is the amount that guarantees absolutely no side effects.”  
  
“So you could give more?”  
  
Michelle does look, for a brief moment, exhausted. He knows the feeling. “Yeah, Anders, you could. Not that they’ll let you.” She plucks a card down from the cabinet. “Here,” she says, handing it to him. “They’re near your office, open every Wednesday and Thursday. They can answer all of your questions, but I have to go.”  
  
—  
  
It feels nothing like the high of those carnivore teeth at the crook of his neck. There is no haze, no fluttering specs of stars at his vision. There is pain, and a significant amount of discomfort as an elderly lady prattles on about doing God’s work, and Anders leaves nauseous and shaking. Just under half a litre of blood is either too much or no where near enough.  
  
Or it’s something else, something unique about that man and his black eyes and his lips against Anders’ skin. He weighs his rather significant sense of self-preservation with his desire to sleep and comes up with a truly terrible plan.  
  
It takes the better part of a month to find him. Anders spends every night in seedy pubs, cramped dives with pool tables and the lingering smell of cigarette smoke. He imagines places like these are easy hunting, home to sad people with sad eyes. So he sits at the bar, orders a drink, and looks around while he fights to stay sober. It’s nearly always a losing battle, and he ends up emptying a bottle of vodka before the night is through.  
  
He is three shots down in a sandy pub with an aging clientele when he sees him walk through the door. He is just as beautiful as Anders remembers and it makes him grit his teeth. The man stops when he sees him, his eyes wide and staring. Anders downs the remainder of his drink, hops off the stool, and closes the space between them with a few quick strides.  
  
He fists his hand in the collar of his gaudy leather jacket and pulls him down into a kiss. He inhales sharply, but he doesn’t push him away, and when Anders finally runs his tongue along his canines they are blunt, harmless, and he groans in disappointment.  
  
“Come with me,” Anders snaps, expecting to be followed. And he does, after adjusting the collar of his coat and sending a surreptitious glance around the bar.  
  
Once they’re alone in the gated alleyway between a set of brick buildings, Anders shoves him back towards the wall, a hand held flat against his chest.

“Listen,” he says, leaning close until his lips graze his ear and the man answers with a whispered sigh. “I don’t sleep. I never sleep. After you bit me, I slept for three days. It was better than any high I’ve ever had and I want that again.”  
  
He opens his mouth to respond, but Anders cuts him off with another sloppy, open mouthed kiss. “I don’t want to know your name, I don’t want to know anything about you. I just want you to bite me.”  
  
“Can you stop me? Like last time?” Anders nods. “Then call a cab,” he says, his voice low.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Call a cab. I’ll be done before it gets here, and you won’t have to walk home.”  
  
Anders watches him with narrowed eyes and Bragi hums in the back of his head, but finally he does what he is told. He won’t look at him, not in the eye anyway. Instead he leans back and he waits until Anders hangs up the phone.

“Right,” he says, shoving his mobile into his pocket. “Bite me.”  
  
—  
  
Anders sleeps and he dreams of being twelve years old and running his fingers over the pages of a book, stained and torn. He dreams of walled in roses, his own secret garden, children playing along the moor. He wakes with a gasp and when he finally shakes off the haze of sleep, his eyes wander to his bookshelf. Everything is new and glossy and nearly untouched, and Anders reaches for the phone.  
  
“Mike,” he says, as he hears a groan on the other end. “I have a question for you.”  
  
“I’m at work, Anders.”  
  
He ignores him, laying back against his pillows, staring at the ceiling. “What did you do with all of my old stuff?”  
  
“I don’t know. I think Val made me shove some boxes into the attic after you moved out.” He says her name without a hint of grief or resentment. Anders marks it down as significant progress.  
  
“And would you still have these boxes?” He asks.  
  
“What exactly are you looking for?”  
  
He considers lying, telling him it’s nothing, just idle curiosity. “A book,” he says instead. “ _The Secret Garden_. I used to read it to Axl when he wouldn’t sit still. And Ty would- ”  
   
“Yeah, I remember it. Hard not to, seeing as it’s sitting on my bookshelf at home.”  
  
“Oh,” he say. “Right. Can I come get it?”  
  
“You know where I keep the spare.”  
  
—  
  
Anders finds him in his local bar a week and a half later, sitting hunched over a glass of bourbon that he's barely drinking. This time he looks slightly less apprehensive when Anders catches the crook of his elbow and pulls him out the door.  
  
“I wondered when I would see you again.” He smiles and Anders has never seen eyes shine so bright, radiant compared to the orange glow of the streetlights. The fear and hesitance seem gone with the cloud of cigarette smoke that he breathes into the air around them.  
  
“Have you been looking?”  
  
“As a matter of fact, yes I have. I want to know what you are. I’d also like to know who you are, come to think of it.”  
  
Anders rolls his eyes. “Absolutely not.” The man shrugs it off, but the smile remains. “And what do you have to be so fucking happy about anyway?”  
  
“You stopped me,” he says. His sideways glances turn dark, half-lidded, and Anders’ mouth goes dry. “I bit you twice, and you stopped me.”  
  
“Yep. And that’s all you need to know. You keep biting me and I’ll keep stopping you. Do we have a deal?”  
  
He kisses like a mourner, his eyes closed, a desperate gasping sigh. “Deal.”  
  
—  
  
It takes two months for Anders to get sick of being bitten in the back alleys of seedy establishments and dragging himself home in the dizzy haze of blood loss, before jerking himself off to the memory of the sounds the man made against his neck, waking with blood and come dried on his hands.    
  
“Nope, not today,” Anders says, snapping his fingers, signalling for him to keep up. “We’re going to my flat. I’m absolutely fucking knackered and I want to crawl right into bed once we’re finished. No walking, no cabs.”  
  
“You want me to know where you live? You’re okay with that?” He pauses, waiting by the curb with his hands fisted in his pockets.  
  
Anders stops walking and turns to face him. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be? You can’t exactly hurt me.”  
  
“Unless you’re asleep,” he points out.  
  
“Do you have any plans to maul me in my sleep?”  
  
“Not currently, no.” He's smiling again and Anders hates it.  
  
“Then hurry the fuck up.”  
  
They make it to his flat in record time and while Anders tosses his keys onto the counter, his less than welcome house guest crouches down in front of his fish tank, poking idly at the glass. “Ever thought of sleeping pills?” He asks. Anders gives him a look usually reserved for Axl and his lapdog. “Therapy?”  
  
“Just sit down,” he says. “Leave my fish alone.”  
  
He sits, legs spread open, arms crossed. “You’re very demanding. I could still decide to kill you in your sleep, you know.”  
  
“Don’t even fucking start,” he says, waving a hand in dismissal. Anders saw the look in his black eyes the first time he bit him. He saw fear and he saw pain and something akin to resignation.  
  
“You know this isn’t healthy, right?”  
  
Anders raises his eyebrows. “Really, Dracula? You were just primed and ready to plot my death and now you’re worried about my wellbeing?”  
  
He shrugs, an awkward, self conscious thing. “My stuff’s pretty straight forward, you know? I bite people, I try not to kill them, I occasionally do it anyway. It’s fucked up but it’s simple. You resort to blood loss to sleep, mate. There isn’t anything simple about that.”

He wants to tell him that it's not the blood loss.  
  
“We’ve talked about the talking thing, haven’t we?” He snaps instead. “Now get to it, I don’t have all night.”  
  
—  
  
Every two weeks, like clockwork, Anders opens the door to bright eyes and something unrecognisable in the depths of his own subconscious, something lost in translation from Bragi’s clever lips. Tonight Anders leaves him in the doorway, shedding his boots while he digs for water in the fridge.  
  
Anders hears a soft, “Oh,” as he stoops for the pile of unopened mail left abandoned on the floor.  
  
“So,” he begins. “Anders Johnson.”  
  
“You fucking prick. Give me those.”  
  
“Sounds a bit foreign. Anders,” he repeats, flipping through the envelopes with quick fingers. His name sounds different coming from him, the slight edge of his accent, the lowering of vowels. Bragi sighs into his ear.  
  
“Yeah, alright. Mystery solved, no need to boast.”  
  
“Really? Because I feel this is very good boasting material.”  
  
Anders groans. “Get over here and bite me, but be clean about it this time.”  
  
“Don’t you want to know my name?” His eyes are dark but not black. He resists the urge to kiss him.  
  
“Absolutely not.” Anders sits down and within seconds he is pushing him back, crawling over him and kissing a line down his throat as his fingers trail down his forearm. He moves with slow, lazy purpose until his tongue traces circular patterns against his wrist.  
  
“Mitchell,” he says, his lips moving against the crook of Anders’ elbow, his eyes stained black when he looks up at him. “My name is Mitchell.”  
  
“What did I just fucking tell you?” He feels him smile against his skin before he bites down and Anders’ eyes slide shut.    
  
—  
  
Anders was quite determined to keep their arrangement as chaste as physically possible. But really, he’s surprised either of them lasted for as long as they did. In the end, all it took was Mitchell moaning against his forearm, licking careful stripes along his skin, for Anders to fist his hand in his hair and shove him away.  
  
Mitchell looks up at him, eyes wide, before Anders pulls him forward and kisses him with rough pinching teeth. Mitchell fumbles with his plaid flannel until Anders tears his hands away, frantically undoing the buttons for him while Mitchell licks blood from his fingers.  
  
Mitchell is pushing him back against the sofa, undoing his belt and tugging at Anders’ waistband while they both gasp for breath and when he finally has his mouth on him, swallowing down around Anders’ cock, his eyes roll shut and his static mind phases out. He pulls back with an obscene sound, pressing his lips to his thighs as he whispers Anders’ name against his unmarked skin.  
  
“Don’t fucking talk,” Anders gasps, his voice wrecked.  
  
“Anders,” Mitchell repeats, moving up to tongue at his navel, crawling across the expanse of his chest, rubbing at his nipples with his thumbs, pausing at his throat. “Anders,” he breathes before he bites down just above his shoulder blade.  
  
He groans, pushing their hips together, bucking up against him. “God damn it, I told you- ”  
  
Mitchell cuts him off with his tongue running along the seam of his lips and Anders’ head falls back against the armrest as he reaches between them, fisting them both roughly with cool hands. He tastes blood.    
  
“There’s something about you,” Mitchell gasps.  
  
Anders snorts, his wrist flung over his eyes as his hips move to the rhythm of their breathing, his other hand entwined in Mitchell’s hair. “Really, that’s the line you’re going to use right now?”  
  
Mitchell inhales in the crook of his neck. “Jesus, there is something about you. I wish I knew.” He rests their foreheads together as they rut like fucking teenagers and Anders is already light headed when Mitchell whispers, “I know you’re close.” Anders smears blood against his chest, but he doesn’t answer, he doesn’t have to, because his eyes are sliding closed and his mouth is caught in an open sigh and Mitchell is moaning into his skin.  
  
They come seconds apart, Mitchell whispering his praises into his hair and all at once Anders feels tacky and overheated and so desperately uncomfortable that he’s pushing himself up onto his elbows despite the throbbing pain behind his eyes. “Get off.”  
  
Mitchell takes his sweet fucking time and he grits his teeth, watching as he cleans himself with a dish towel before reaching for Anders. “Don’t,” he snaps, tearing it from his fingers. “I can do it.”  
  
“Doesn’t it make it easier for you, if you like me just a bit?” Mitchell is smiling as he pulls on his shirt. His mouth is still smeared with remnants of his blood, staining his lips copper red.  
  
“Not at all,” Anders tells him.  
  
“Suit yourself.” He leaves Anders with a kiss pressed to his temple.  
  
“Fuck off,” he shouts after him, but his eyes are already closing and in minutes Mitchell is nothing but a hint in his dream.  
  
—  
  
“You know,” Mitchell says as he leans against the counter and waits for Anders to finish up the email he was drafting when he came through the door. “I’ve never had to work this hard to win someone over before.”  
  
Anders raises his eyebrows but doesn’t look away from the screen of his laptop. “That’s because there’s nothing to win. I’m going to fuck you, you’re going to bite me, then I’m going to kick you out and go to sleep.” Mitchell hums to himself, grinning. “You’re delusional,” Anders tells him.  
  
“I’m starting to think you’re not even into blokes,” he says thoughtfully, taking a seat on the bar stool across from him. “I’m pretty sure I’m gorgeous. It’s been a while but I’d say the vast majority of my sexual encounters- “  
  
“Jesus Christ, stop talking. Go wait in the bedroom.”  
  
“Oh,” Mitchell begins, delighted. “I’m moving up in the world. Anders’ sacred space.”  
  
“Nothing sacred about it,” he murmurs. “I have made some pretty questionable decisions over the years. I’m certainly not proud of every lay I’ve had in there and you will inevitably be listed among them.”  
  
“I’ll convince you,” he says, grinning. Anders flips him off, and resolutely does not watch him turn and walk away.    
  
—  
  
One morning he wakes to find that Mitchell hasn’t left. He lays sprawled across his sofa, chewing through burnt toast topped with Nutella, watching trashy daytime television.  
  
“You’re not serious.” Anders stops in the doorway, half dressed with his gelled hair sticking up in the back and the lines of his sheets engraved across his wrists.  
  
“Morning,” he says, his mouth stuffed full. “Thought you wouldn’t mind if I stayed the night. I live a ways out, you know, and the buses are a nightmare past midnight.”  
  
“You fucking liar, get out of my flat.”  
  
“I like your flat,” Mitchell says, glancing around the sitting room. “I live in a total shit hole. I’m in the south end, around Manukau.” His pronunciation is off and it would have been just the slightest bit endearing if it weren’t Mitchell saying it. “Bit dodgy, that place.”  
  
He rubs at his eyes with the tips of his fingers and hopes that when he opens them Mitchell will have disappeared. Stranger things have happened.

“How’re you feeling?” he asks, swinging his legs over the edge of the couch. “Well rested? You did sleep for about half a day. It’s nearly two. Can I get you some toast?”  
  
“You can get the fuck out of my sitting room.”  
  
“Eggs?” He continues, ignoring him. He stands, walking towards the kitchen with uncalled for familiarity.  
  
“I’m going to go shower,” Anders says. “When I’m out, I want you gone.”  
  
“You’ll come round eventually,” Mitchell shouts from the kitchen. Anders slams the bathroom door behind him.  
  
—  
  
Christ, he is beautiful though, and sometimes Anders fucking hates it. Mitchell manages a shy smile, holding up a takeout bag with one hand, looking for all the world like a fucking Greek statue and suddenly Anders feels like Atlas, an unknown weight bearing down on his shoulders. Sometimes, he just wants to throw him onto his back, press his fingers to his windpipe, and watch as his eyes bleed to ink. He like to think it's Bragi's influence, but these days he's not so sure.  
  
Anders snatches the bag from his hand and pulls him inside with a firm tug along his wrist. Mitchell follows as he tosses the food onto the table and leads him towards the bedroom.  
  
“Clothes off,” he says, and Mitchell kisses him like another one of his offerings. It's soft, light, barely a hint of tongue along his bottom lip and Anders wants to devour him.  
  
When he pushes him back down onto the bed, Mitchell laughs like he sees something beautiful in him too. Anders can’t stand the look in his eyes, so he undoes his tie and presses the pad of his thumb to the tips of Mitchell's exposed canines, sucking air through his teeth as it break the skin. He traces a line of blood down Mitchell’s chest until his radiance is gone, dissolved into something significantly more predatory.  
  
This is better, he thinks, as Mitchell pulls him down, leaving bruises on his arms. This he can live with.  
  
—  
  
“Absolutely not.” Mitchell looks out of place everywhere short of a scene club and now here he is, dressed in distressingly tight jeans and his customary black, in the middle of his office. However, he is also holding what looks like coffee and Anders groans. “Alright I’ll take the coffee, but then you leave.”  
  
“Oh no, that’s for me,” Mitchell says. “This is yours.”  
  
Anders catches the sealed bottle in one hand, staring down at it. “You’re joking. Orange juice?”  
  
“Good for low blood sugar. Caffeine is about the last thing you want.”  
  
“I’m not drinking fucking orange juice at eleven in the morning.”  
  
“Well you’re not getting any of my coffee,” Mitchell says with a shrug. “And I’d suggest you go high iron for lunch, maybe Lebanese. Fan of lentils?”  
  
Anders is ready to shove the orange juice bottle right down his throat when Dawn peaks her head around the corner with a curious, “everything alright? Anders, your eleven fifteen will be calling soon.”  
  
“It’s fine,” he says through gritted teeth. “He was just leaving.”  
  
And he does, but not without pausing in front of Dawn with an oversized grin and an outstretched hand. “Mitchell,” he says. “Lovely to meet you.”  
  
“You as well,” she manages, sounding a bit dazed as she watches Mitchell turn towards the door.  
  
—  
  
“Give me your phone.”  
  
Anders snorts. “Fuck no.”  
  
As Mitchell leans over him, Anders resists the urge to run his hand down his chest and force him back onto the sheets. His body still thrums to the sound of Mitchell panting in his ear, whispering all manner of sins between their lips and Anders doesn’t feel particularly inclined to kick him out of his flat just yet. “I will happily fuck you again, though.”  
  
“Mm.” Mitchell shifts his weight onto one hand as he runs the other down Anders’ stomach, toying with his pubic hair before slipping between his thighs. “And here I was thinking I’d get a turn.”  
  
“Works for me,” he sighs.  
  
“But I want you to give me your phone first.”  
  
Anders laughs against the skin of his neck. “I love how you think that’s going to work.”  
  
He pulls away suddenly, sitting back on his heels and watching Anders with an almost injured expression. “What if I need to call you?”    
  
“You know where I live.” He pauses. “And work, evidentially. I’m sure you’ll manage something.”  
  
“And what,” Mitchell begins, slowly turning him over, licking along his spine, “-if you need to call me?”  
  
“I won’t.” He hums in disbelief but thankfully drops it altogether in favour of putting his mouth to better use.  
  
—  
  
Anders isn’t terribly surprised to find a new contact listed under ‘St. Mitchell’s Hospital’ the next time he scrolls through his phone. He answers on the second ring. “You know there isn’t a Saint Mitchell, right?”  
  
“Is there not?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Pity,” Mitchell sighs. “How do you feel about kebabs for lunch?”  
  
—  
  
He was right, as it turns out, and Anders does come around. By June their visits tend to end with Mitchell in bed beside him, his lips hovering over the nape of his neck, his arm extended around his waist. Anders allows it, reasoning that sharing a bed has never been taboo for him as long as it doesn’t extend to sharing breakfast the next morning. He tends to fall asleep within minutes anyway, and Mitchell’s presence goes more or less unnoticed.  
  
Tonight Mitchell is brushing his hand through Anders’ hair, a constant, teasing motion and finally he pulls away, exhausted by the feeling of blunt nails against his skin. “Alright,” he starts, staring up at the ceiling. “If I tell you what I am will you stop this?”  
  
“Stop what?” His fingers are slowly creeping across the duvet, dangerously close to the ridge of Anders’ collarbone.  
  
“The touching, the office visits, takeout and whatever other bullshit you try and pull because it’s really starting to get to me.”  
  
“Tell me,” Mitchell breathes, his lips against Anders’ neck.  
  
“We’re vessels of Norse gods. I have Bragi, God of Poetry, perpetually telling me off somewhere in the back of my head.”  
  
“Huh,” Mitchell hums. “I wonder if there’s any Celtic gods.”  
  
“Really?” He asks, pushing himself up onto his elbows and turning to face him. “You’ve been nagging me for months and that’s all you have to say?”  
  
He leans forward and kisses the corner of his mouth, chaste and light. “I’ve been nagging you in general, not nagging you about the whole being human thing. Though good to know, really. Doesn’t help you out much with the blood loss. Sounds like you’re definitely mortal, yeah? So you are still a bit low on your iron intake.”  
  
Anders rolls his eyes, falling back against the pillows. “Listen,” he says, eyeing the florescent glow of his alarm clock. “I never quite learned to keep my mouth shut as a kid and I’m certainly not going to now. I like my own space, I don’t want to text anyone to tell them when I’m coming home, I sure as hell don’t want anyone redecorating and introducing me to in-laws. Whatever it is you’re looking for, I’m not it.”  
  
“Lucky you,” Mitchell hums as he traces the lines of Anders’ ribcage. “I have no in-laws to speak of and I’m shit at decorating.”  
  
“Fucking hell, just go to sleep.”  
  
He feels the brush of Mitchell’s eyelashes against the back of his neck as his lips burn a trail down his spine. “Good night,” he whispers. Anders doesn’t answer.    
  
—  
  
He doesn’t ask any more questions, neither of them do. His collective knowledge about Mitchell consists of the way he takes his coffee and his uncertain fashion sense and the sounds he makes when Anders has three fingers buried deep inside of him or when he lets him lick the blood from the palm of his hand. And to be perfectly honest, that’s all he really needs to know.  
  
“Why tetra fish?” Mitchell asks, tracing his fingers along the glass of his aquarium.  
  
“It’s the colours,” he answers automatically, before his tongue has the chance to sensor and splice. “They- " he sighs, waving his hand along his temple. “He likes them. They shut him up.”  
  
Mitchell turns to him and nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I get that.”  
  
He thinks that may very well be true, but he doesn’t ask why.    
  
—  
  
“So.” Ty is whisking batter and Anders is fiddling with the label on his beer bottle, slowly peeling it backwards. “Dawn tells me the same man has been showing up at your office a few times a week.”  
  
“Dawn does have such an unusually large mouth.”  
  
Ty tactfully ignores him. “Is this your way of telling me that you’re seeing someone?”  
  
“Christ, what do you take me for? We’re fucking, okay? He is extraordinarily good in bed and frankly that’s all I care about.” Ty has known about what he calls his tendency towards sexual nondiscrimination since he was thirteen years old and walked in on Anders with his hands down the trousers of a boy four years his senior.  
  
“Does he know?”  
  
“What?” The label slips free and Anders begins rolling it into a thin cylinder between his fingers.  
  
“Does he know you’re just fucking? Because coming to visit you at work, bringing you coffee, and ordering lunch for you doesn’t sound like a guy who’s messing about. It sounds like something I’d do.”  
  
“I fucking wish he brought me coffee. You know what, it doesn’t matter. I’ve made it very clear to him where I stand in this. If he wants to dig his own goddamn grave he’s welcome to.”  
  
“Be careful,” Ty says with a lingering touch to his shoulder.  
  
“There’s nothing to be careful of.”  
  
—  
  
He dreams of his brothers as children. Ty was always so pale, thin and unsteady, and Mike brought him to more doctors appointments than football matches. Anders used to kneel by his side, telling him to look away whenever the nurse drew blood.  
  
“No,” he says, and Ty’s watering blue eyes turn to him. Even in his dream, Anders knows just how quickly they’ll fade to dark when he grows older. “No, you look at me.”  
  
Mike tries to appease a three-year-old Axl with tufty ginger hair as he wails and wails and wails. It’s a sound that keeps him up at night, a sound he fears waking to, coming home to. Crying children put him on edge, and he can never seem to calm them down. He hasn’t Mike’s special touch, so instead he reaches for Ty’s baby-soft cheek with the tips of his fingers. He’s ice cold.  
  
He wakes to the slight blue haze of morning and to Mitchell stirring at his side. “Alright?”  
  
“I’m fine.” He says. “Go back to sleep.”    
  
—  
  
He rarely has to stop Mitchell anymore. He drinks from his wrist or his shoulder or his thigh before they fuck and as Anders inhales the heady scent of his skin, Mitchell whispers into Anders’ deaf ears and they forget about Bragi’s influence altogether.  
  
Sometimes, when they mix pain and pleasure with Anders writhing on his lap and Mitchell’s teeth embedded in the crook of his neck, he thinks for sure that he’ll die like this. He will sink so far into this toxic, beautiful mess that he will forget to call out until it’s too late and they both will pay the price.  
  
Sometimes, though Anders will rarely ever admit it, he thinks it’s probably worth the risk.  
  
—  
  
“What exactly is this?” He asks, holding up a crystal cut ashtray that materialised on his bedside table at some point during the week.  
  
“It’s where I put cigarette butts.”  
  
“Really? You know what I mean. I told you no smoking in my flat.”  
  
“Ah,” Mitchell begins, holding up a finger. “But, you said I could smoke out the window. And for that, I’ll still need an ashtray.” He correctly interprets Anders’ look of disbelief for what it is. “Also, I’m more or less hoping I can wear you down so you’ll let me smoke inside because it gets much colder in this country than I thought it would.”  
  
“Jesus,” he mumbles into his hands, rubbing at his eyes. “You drive me fucking crazy.”  
  
“In a good way,” Mitchell insists, kissing his cheek and biting idly at his earlobe.  
  
“No, not at all in a good way.”  
  
Mitchell’s hands reach for his belt buckle. “You’re a filthy liar, Anders Johnson.”  
  
—  
  
He stands beneath the spray of near scalding hot water, closes his eyes and breathes out. This is his smarmy new age meditation, his own little trick to lull Bragi to sleep for as long as it takes to shower. He wonders if this is how Olaf feels when he’s near the ocean, if there’s something to be said for Norse gods and their water.  
  
He used to think that his sacred tendency towards long, hot showers was a bit of high maintenance picked up from a childhood of faulty taps and a water heater that reliably turned off every two and a half minutes, an inevitable shock of cold. More likely though, it’s just the only time Bragi fits seamlessly into the back of his head, like an outline instead of a shadow. He inhales steam and lets it sit in his chest, heavy and clean.  
  
The door swings open and Mitchell tugs his shirt over his shoulders and smiles like the devil as he asks, “Want some company?”  
  
Ordinarily, embarrassingly, a glimpse at Mitchell’s trimmed waist is enough to send his thoughts swirling in the direction of stripping him naked and fucking him against a wall, but right now he wants nothing more than to keep his eyes closed and stand beneath the spray until his fingers prune and the mirrors fog over.  
  
“Come on in,” he says.  
  
Mitchell looks at him and pauses with his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his sweats, his head tilted, his smile curious and slight. “Actually,” he says. “I have a bit of a craving. Coffee and chocolate digestives. I think that’s the plan for me. I’ll shower after you get out, but take your time. I have a lot of biscuits to get through.”     
  
—  
  
For all of Anders’ quiet, rigid secrets, for all the things he deliberately doesn’t say, Mitchell reads him like poetry. It’s infuriating, the details he keeps and unfolds and presents to him later, so matter of fact. And yet Anders knows little about him. His stories are quilt work patterns of Irish summers and lovely, harmless anecdotes about the weather in London.  
  
He’s used to living without any reference to a past and, for now, Anders is happy to let him. Mitchell isn’t the only one who can read between the lines. Anders sees each altered fact and each fond memory for exactly what it is — something that ended badly.    
  
“I never signed up for a flatmate,” he says rather pointedly, nudging Mitchell’s thigh with the side of his foot.  
  
“I’d be an awesome flatmate, stop complaining.”  
  
“You’re the worst. You’re lucky I have a maid or I’d make you do the washing up.”  
  
“I don’t do washing up,” Mitchell warns him with a smile.  
  
Anders hates that he’s started to wonder, to question, to imagine where he lived before. He wants to know why it started, and how it ended, and his questions are only inches away from bursting through his teeth. He wonders if, when the time comes, Mitchell will lie.  
  
If he does, Anders decides, he’ll let him.  
  
—  
  
Anders is no stranger to leaving someone in bed while he gets ready for work but something about this feels different. He has to redo his tie for the second time because his eyes are drawn to where Mitchell lays, wrapped in his grey sheets, hands tucked beneath a pillow. He winces as he pulls the tie just a breath too tight around his throat.  
  
Mitchell’s eyes always flutter open before he reaches the door. He will smile, a lazy, knowing grin, and saunter out of bed to kiss him goodbye. Anders never kisses him back. Instead, he simply allows it, a chaste touch to the corner of his mouth, an unspoken agreement with absolutely no reciprocity.  
  
Anders has his briefcase packed, his hair combed in place, and still Mitchell doesn’t wake. He pauses by the door, twisting his keys around in his fingers, before he sets them down and retreats to the kitchen. He had planned on eating at the office, but really there's no harm in breakfast at home a few days a week. He pours a bowl of Weet-Bix, sniffs dubiously at the milk, and takes a seat on a bar stool, gazing absentmindedly at the bedroom door.

He catches himself, after a bite or two, in a horrific moment of self clarity.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he murmurs, standing and brushing invisible lint from his trousers. “What the fuck is wrong with me?” He locks the door and leaves without a backwards glance.  
  
—  
  
“My name’s actually John,” he tells him one evening as he lays sprawled across the couch with his feet kicked up onto the coffee table. Anders glances up from his laptop, watching him.  
  
“Really, arsehole? You gave me a fake name?”  
  
“Not fake,” he says, his hands folded behind his head. “John Mitchell, that’s the whole of it.”  
  
He thinks there must be a story to this, one Mitchell isn’t quite ready to share, though it sits heavy on his tongue. He never asks a single thing of Anders, so he allows him this. “Am I to call you John now?”  
  
“You can call me whatever you want.” The television blares reruns of Master Chef. “Just thought I’d tell you.”  
  
Anders doesn’t respond and Mitchell changes the channel.  
  
—  
  
He can hear him speaking, and even if he doesn’t want to, even if he wants to succumb to the blood loss and slide into a black, dreamless sleep, Bragi listens.  
  
“Things were pretty hard, when I was a kid.” His fingers brush over Anders’ hairline. “You could be a miner or a solider, anything else meant watching your family starve when winter came. Sometimes even then, there wasn’t enough to eat. But I didn’t notice that kind of stuff when I was little.” Instead he tells him about scraped elbows and muddy knees, about fireflies caught in cupped hands, fields of orchids and red clover, down and hen feathers.  
  
“Everything stayed picturesque, until you got old enough to see past it,” Mitchell says. Anders can’t remember a time when he couldn’t see past the opaque haze of childhood. If his family was ever picturesque it was to the brushstrokes of a Bosch landscape. He’s not sure if he listens now for Bragi or for himself, but Anders doesn’t interrupt.  
  
“I never did learn Irish,” he says. “It was a taboo, back then, something they wanted to force out of schools and families. Mam insisted we know the songs though, and those I still remember.” He pauses to hum a whittling tune. “I wish I’d learned.”  
  
“You’ve had enough time,” Anders says, his voice rough and catching. Mitchell pauses for a moment, his fingers still. “A hundred odd years is more than enough to pick up a language,” he continues.  
  
“Yeah,” he laughs, a bit shakily, to match Anders’ flimsy voice. “I guess you’re right. I could’ve learned.”  
  
“You still can.”  
  
“Nah, I hardly have the head for language.” He can hear Mitchell’s grin before he sees it. “You could learn for me.”    
  
“You’re just lazy,” he mumbles into his pillow. Mitchell laughs like he’s young and awake and reckless. “Besides, you would be ashamed to have a Kiwi master your language before you do.”  
  
“No,” Mitchell shifts beside him, laying down until he can run his cool fingertips down the ridge of Anders’ cheekbone. “No, I wouldn’t be.”  
  
—  
  
Anders wakes to children laughing just outside his window. He groans, reaching for a pillow to deafen the noise. “Fucking kids,” he mumbles into the fabric. “I was having the most amazing dream.”  
  
Mitchell shifts beside him, already awake, and runs his fingers down Anders’ arm. “Did your dream have something to do with my cock? Because I’m more than willing to continue where it left off.”  
  
“You wish I dreamed about your cock,” Anders says, shoving his hand away. “No, it involved perfectly round, bouncing melon tits, which you are sadly lacking.”  
  
“That is rather sad, isn’t it?” Mitchell is kissing down his throat, his tongue sliding suggestively over his skin.  
  
“Hey,” he murmurs. “No biting.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because you just did it last night, arsehole. And I’d rather not die of blood loss.”  
  
“I didn’t bite you,” Mitchell says, even as Anders reaches back, gripping at the marks in his shoulder. “Well I did, I bit down, but I didn’t take any blood. I haven’t been for weeks.”  
  
He hardly has the time to wax indignant before Mitchell is pressing at his shoulders, turning him onto his side. “You really can’t tell, can you? Listen, there’s not any secret, there’s no numbing venom or anything. Trust me, my life would’ve been a lot easier if there was. The first time, it was probably the blood loss. Maybe the second as well. But after that, Anders, it was all in your head. It’s always been in your head, along with that God of yours, whispering away. I’m not a cure,” Mitchell smiles, barely a quirk of his lips, focused somewhere just below his eye line. “Though Lord knows I want to be.”    
  
“Well that’s fucking fantastic.” Anders rubs at his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “That’s all I need, to be told I’ll never sleep again. You couldn’t have let me placebo my way through this?”  
  
“You sleep just fine.” Mitchell pulls his hands away and kisses each of his knuckles in turn. “You need to talk to someone- "  
  
“Can you shut up with the therapy shit?”  
  
“I never said therapy. You can talk to anyone. Your brothers- ” Anders snorts in disbelief. “Or not. Dawn, a friend. I’d say you could talk to me but I already know you won’t.”  
  
“Yeah, alright.” Anders says, pulling himself up, reaching for a pair of boxers and his stained t-shirt. “I’ve had just about enough of this.”  
  
“Anders- "  
  
“No,” he snaps, turning to face him. “You sit the fuck back down and stop running your mouth about all of this self-help shit because Christ, Mitchell, you’re guiltier than sin and we both fucking know it. In fact, between the two of us, I’d say I’m just a hair more stable than you are, all things considered. I’ve certainly never killed anyone.”  
  
Mitchell looks away, but Anders can’t quite stop himself once he’s started. He knows he plays dirty but it’s just so easy. All he sees when he looks at him are the holes in his flimsy armour. “I know you’ve tried to be good and shape up, but I’m willing to bet you failed far more often than you succeeded. In fact, I don’t even have to bet. I saw it in you, that first night. I was about to be another failure, wasn’t I? But lucky Mitchell, Bragi stopped him short of yet another murder.”  
  
“I wouldn’t have killed you,” he says, his voice soft. Anders very nearly rolls his eyes.  
  
“No? Can you swear to me that you weren’t about to rip my fucking throat out?”  
  
Mitchell looks up at him then, his gaze steady, and shakes his head.

“So you can stop going on about how messed up I am, or you can go back to sleeping in your own flat. How’s that?”  
  
“Understood,” Mitchell says. Anders slams the bedroom door behind him.  
   
—  
  
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”  
  
Mitchell stiffens behind him, his shoulders tense, his fingers curling around Anders’ forearm. It’s the only question he’ll allow himself, just to keep the acidic burn of affection from creeping too far up his throat. His heart heaves an adrenaline sigh as he waits, Mitchell’s breath warm against the back of his neck.  
  
“I’m not sure I could name the worst. You were right though, I’ve done more bad than good.”  
  
Anders almost has the decency to regret saying anything at all. “Pick one,” he whispers.  
  
He hesitates. “There was a girl, I never knew her name. She was at a club in Coventry, in the forties. She was too young to be there, but I didn’t know it at the time. I was sloppy and she died slowly, painfully.”  
  
“How old was she?”  
  
“Fifteen,” he says. “I don’t know why it always felt worse than all the twenty year old’s. They were still kids too.”  
  
“Have you ever thought of killing yourself?”  
  
“Yes,” Mitchell whispers. “Many, many times.”  
  
“And yet you’re still here.”  
  
“I’m selfish.”  
  
“Yeah,” Anders says. “You are.”  
  
—  
  
“How’s Mitchell been?” Dawn asks as she hands Anders a stack of papers to be signed. She looks quite pleased with herself and for a moment Anders thinks of ignoring her altogether but his tongue gets the better of him.  
  
“It’s really none of your business. And do you know who else that counts for?” He asks, pointing at her with his pen. “My dearest brother Ty, who you’ve been blabbing to.”  
  
She shrugs. “He’s worried about you. So I told him you’ve started to settle down a bit- "  
  
“Wait a minute,” he says, cutting her off. “I’m certainly not settling down.”  
  
“Oh, of course,” Dawn says, waving him off. “You just have an unusually attractive friend that you share a bed with every night.”  
  
“Not every night.” It’s a very flimsy defence and he knows it.  
  
“Most nights,” she says, snatching a document out from under his hands the second he lifts up his pen. “Plus you act like less of a prick now that he’s around.”  
  
“Okay, that’s just a blatant lie.”  
  
Dawn shrugs, little paisley patterns shifting over her shoulders, and returns to her desk.  
  
—  
  
Anders wakes to someone pounding at his door. Beside him, Mitchell groans and squints towards the window. “It’s definitely Saturday,” he says, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his palms. “Maybe they’ll go away.”  
  
“They won’t,” Anders sighs, as he pulls on a pair of sweatpants left strewn over his bedside table. “Not if it’s a blood relative of mine. They’re damn persistent. And it’s probably Axl. Go back to sleep.” Mitchell hums in response, watching him with half-lidded eyes as he opens the bedroom door.  
  
Seconds later, Anders is letting Axl into his entryway with a knowing sigh.  
  
“Anders,” he practically shouts, trailing him to the kitchen as he digs through the cabinet for coffee. Mitchell, rather unsurprisingly, left the pot caked in dregs.  
  
“Lovely,” he mumbles, emptying it into the bin.  
  
“Anders,” Axl repeats, taking a seat on his counter. “Listen, I know you were asleep, but I have the absolute best idea.”  
  
“If it involves a beer commercial I’m going to splash hot coffee in your face the instant I have it made.”  
  
“It’s not,” he says. “I promise. It’s much better. Not even Mike thought of it.”  
  
“That’s not saying much. Listen, Axl, mate. This is really not the best time. Between you and me, I kind of have someone over.”  
  
“Oh,” Axl’s eyes widen. “Right. Well get rid of her, Anders. This stuff’s important.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s not exactly that easy. How about I meet you at that shitty cafe near your’s for dinner? We can talk then.”  
  
“I have dinner plans with Zeb.” He looks vaguely indignant and Anders resists the urge to grind his teeth. “Look, I’ll tell her to leave myself. Family emergency and all, I’m very convincing.” Axl takes a few cautious steps towards the bedroom door and looks back at Anders like he's gauging his reaction.

Anders just takes a seat on the stool and watches him, listening to the coffee drip and hiss as he wonders if it's worth outing himself to see the look on Axl’s face when Mitchell stumbles naked out of bed. He decides it’s definitely worth it, so he waves him on and settles in for the show.  
  
Axl opens the door with a loud and rather pathetic, “Excuse me- " but stops midway through.

Mitchell is sitting up, pushing his hair back from his eyes, looking at Axl with a slight tilt to his head. “Can I help you, mate?”  
  
Anders can’t quite hide his snort of laughter as Axl slams the door, and turns, his face an alarming shade of red. “ _Really_? And you didn’t warn me?”  
  
“There was just no stopping you, bro. So insistent on seeing my current fuck out the door.”  
  
“Well I’ve been scarred enough for one day,” he says.  
  
Anders takes two mugs down from the cabinet. “Yes, I bet you have. And if you stay any longer I’ll be forced to tell you about his cock in rather poetic detail.”  
  
“Yeah, no thanks. Dinner tonight.”  
  
“Dinner tonight,” Anders promises. “Now get the fuck out of here.”  
  
—  
  
“So I was thinking- ” Axl launches right into it, speaking before the waiter even has a chance to set the menus down. Anders holds up a hand, cutting him off while he orders a bottle of wine for them to share.

“Your thought can at least wait five minutes.”  
  
“You said we were going to the cafe,” Axl mumbles, squinting at the italic scrawl and mouthing names silently to himself.  
  
“I changed my mind,” he says. Anders felt like splurging on a French restaurant and not because he had any particular craving. Frankly, he wants to watch Axl try and work out the menu with his stumbling syllables and gag down duck pâté. He imagines it will be well worth the price.  
  
“Whatever. Can I tell you my idea now?” Anders pours wine for them both and orders a bisque to start and when he finally inhales over the open glass he waves his hand for Axl to continue. “So, you know how we all kind of have jobs that fit with our gods? I mean, you work in PR and Ty fixes cold shit. Even Loki is a goddamn lawyer and what’s more evil than that?”  
  
Anders frowns. He has a point. “Well, you’re forgetting Mike in that, and Michelle. Love has no business in medicine.”  
  
“Mike’s just fighting with himself, that’s all. And Michelle doesn’t count, she never counts. Anyway, I was thinking we could start to look around bridal shops? Or wedding halls? I mean she’s the Goddess of Marriage, right?”  
  
“I’ll admit,” he says slowly, swirling his wine around and around the glass, making Bragi hum at the sight. “It’s not a brilliant idea, but it certainly isn’t a terrible one.”  
  
Axl smiles and he looks twelve again, twisting at candy wrappers with dirty hands. “So you’ll help?”  
  
“I’ll call around,” he agrees. “Make a list or two. See if you can get Mike and Michelle to agree to go shopping for wedding dresses.”  
  
“Yeah, I will. Thank you, Anders, honestly.”  
  
Anders waves him off and with business completed, Axl spends the remainder of their evening talking animatedly about his flatmate and her many quirky peculiarities. Anders wonders when it is that he will finally realise what exactly he’s saying. Axl might have done some growing up, but he’s still just twenty-one and love must feel both common and inconceivable. He hopes, for the briefest of moments, that he never finds Frigg.  
  
“Axl,” he begins, after a lull in conversation. “You’re really not going to say a word about the fact that you walked in on a man this morning?”  
  
Axl frowns. “Why would I? You fuck anything that moves, anything half attractive anyway. And I kind of always assumed that meant _anything_ , regardless of what was going on down there,” he gestures vaguely at Anders’ crotch. “Not that I was delighted to see him, but I definitely wasn’t surprised.”  
  
“Charming. If it helps, Mitchell wasn’t thrilled to see you either. I, on the other hand, had great fun. You put on a magnificent show.”  
  
He snorts, drawing patterns in his leftover sauce with the tip of his fork. “Mitchell,” he repeats after a moment.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“You know his name?”  
  
“It would appear so, yes.”  
  
Axl looks up, his face splitting into a grin. “You know the name of someone you slept with.” Anders doesn’t even bother to interrupt him. Instead he takes an unnecessarily large gulp of wine. “You have a boyfriend, don’t you?”  
  
“Well that’s one conclusion too far,” he says. “Yes, I’ve slept with Mitchell before, and I’ll tell you why.”  He leans forward, his arms folded on the table. “He has an absolutely enormous cock. Like, this is some porno level shit, bro. Really, it’s magnificent.”  
  
Axl pushes back, his hands clasped over his ears. “Okay, I’m done. Point made.”  
  
“And as it turns out,” Anders continues, ignoring him. “He doesn’t have all that much experience, due to the frankly alarming size of his member, and I’ve been having a very good time showing him the ropes. Literally. I kept him tied to my bed for nearly the entire weekend.”  
  
“Christ, Anders!” He snaps, his eyes screwed shut. “I don’t need to know this stuff.”  
  
“Oh my dear brother,” he sighs, pouring the last of the wine. “You really do.”  
  
—  
  
“I’ve already met Dawn,” Mitchell begins, swinging his legs over the edge of Anders’ counter top. “And Axl - kind of.”  
  
“I’m not introducing you to them.”  
  
“Not like that. I just want to see more of your gods in action. Especially the immortal.”  
  
“He’s not immortal, and we’re not gods. Not yet anyway, we’re vessels.” Anders is flipping idly through takeout menus, hoping Mitchell has the tact to drop it altogether. Somewhat unsurprisingly, he doesn’t. “Listen, we just don’t get on, okay?”  
  
“You’re family."  
  
“Yeah, but that’s not a fucking guarantee of chemistry now is it?” He sighs, his palms flat against the granite. “It’s no one’s fault. We’re just very different people, with very different views of the world.”  
  
“And it’s definitely nothing to do with your sexuality?”  
  
Anders snorts. “What is this, the fucking seventies? They don’t give a fuck if I’m after men or women though they’d prefer that I didn’t bring either home. No, it’s all just personal shit.”  
  
Mitchell stands and wraps his arms around Anders’ waist, kissing an idle pattern over the seams of his button up. “Like what?”  
  
“Well I did sleep with Mike’s ex-wife when she was still his fiancée, which was fun at first but really didn’t endear him to me. But I think the vast majority came out when I was a teenager and more or less stuck. Honestly, that’s it. We just don’t get on.”  
  
Mitchell is laughing into his ear, a short span of breath that makes Anders’ pulse flare. He presses his nose to his neck like he can smell it and inhales.  
  
—  
  
Anders falls asleep to Mike’s voice ringing in his ear. It’s a conversation he remembers well, though he wishes he didn’t. Valerie’s things were packed in boxes around their sitting room and Anders felt like he was the only one who could see the ash for the eruption it would soon be. He waited until Ty and Axl were asleep before he picked at every one of Mike’s latent insecurities until finally he fought back.  
  
“You’re only angry because you know you’ll never be this happy,” Mike had shouted, pushing him until his shoulders hit the wall.  
  
He wanted to tell him that he had the right words but the wrong order. Anders wouldn’t be happy with a woman he doesn’t love placing flowers in a vase in the kitchen while her clothes linger neatly in the wardrobe, her framed photographs placed to collect dust on the mantle. Anders would never be satisfied with ordinary, that’s what Mike should have said. He would never be happy like that.  
  
Anders closes his eyes and desperately hopes that it’s still true.  
  
—  
  
He lays across the couch, his legs propped up in Mitchell’s lap while Laurel and Hardy silently skirt across a hardwood floor with childlike looks of surprise. He watches Mitchell, his quirked lips, his half-lidded eyes. He smells faintly of Anders’ shampoo and aftershave and while half of him wants to sit and admire the angle of his cheekbones like an art exhibit, the other half wants him completely naked, straddling him on the bed.  
  
“What’re you staring at?” Mitchell asks, tapping his shin.  
  
“When was the last time you saw your reflection?”  
  
He frowns, eyebrows drawn together, thinking. “Before the war, I guess. Mam had a vanity, probably expensive, now that I think on it. I used to sit and watch her do her hair. So probably in that mirror, it must’ve been the last time. She did get a photo taken of me though,” he adds. “Said I could have it when I came back, because it was a bit of a big deal at the time, my own photo. But she got to keep it after all.”    
  
“I don’t miss my parents,” he says, and the question hangs there, for Mitchell to either grab or ignore.  
  
“It’s been a very long time,” he says, smiling. He runs his thumb along the arch of Anders’ foot. “I don’t miss them either.”  
  
“But if you got the chance,” Anders says slowly. “You’d choose to see them again?”  
  
“No,” he replies quickly, easily. “Their son died in the war, and that’s the end of it.” Anders nods, and Mitchell presses a kiss to the inside of his ankle. “You’ve spent most of your life surviving your family, and I’ve spent most of mine surviving without. It’s different, but it’s not all bad, trust me.”  
  
He aches to ask him if he had brothers, if he read to them at night, if he told them stories of moving forests, trees that walk with children and protect them from the dark. He always wanted to be independent, cut away from his family, but suddenly, looking at Mitchell’s distant smile, Anders isn’t sure what it is he wants.  
  
“I never said it was all bad,” he murmurs, pulling idly at the waistband of Mitchell’s jeans. He undoes the button with a press of his thumb and Mitchell’s grin turns wicked. He shoves away thoughts of blood and ink in favour of the flat expanse of Mitchell’s stomach.  
  
“Is this your way of telling me you’re done talking?”  
  
“I’m never done talking,” he says. “Take off your clothes.”  
  
—  
  
Olaf’s static voice encourages him to leave a message and Anders hangs up before the tone has a chance to whistle through the receiver. Like a siren call he opens his door two days later to his grandfather in surf shorts, waving a plastic bag of crumbled brownies before his eyes. “Fresh batch,” he says, smiling.  
  
“You know I prefer to smoke.” He eats one anyway, wrinkling his nose at the taste, and then reaches for a second. “Your cookies always turn out better.”  
  
Olaf stretches out beside him on the sofa, his feet propped up on the coffee table. “Chocolate craving,” he says, by way of explanation. “I’ve been having dreams.”  
  
“Yeah, I’m sure you have, old man. About that little blonde you’ve been fucking.” He pops the last bite into his mouth, and closes his eyes.  
  
“You’ve been having dreams as well?” He asks, turning to him with a lazy smile and half-lidded eyes.  
  
“No, I’ve been talking to Ty. I’m not totally out of the loop, you know. I hear the important stuff.” He shifts, turning on his side. “I do have a question though. A few questions.” He pauses and Olaf yawns. “A conversation, rather.”  
  
“And what’s that?”  
  
“Your life has been indulgent even by my standards.”  
  
“Not a bad thing,” he says with a shrug.  
  
“No, it’s not. But don’t you ever get tired of it?” Olaf raises his eyebrows. “Being stuck like this?”  
  
“Eternally young and spry? Is someone having a midlife crisis?”  
  
“First of all, fuck you - a midlife crisis. I’m perfectly fucking fine. But you,” he stares up at the ceiling. Pot makes Bragi almost resentfully silent. “You’re stuck like this. You can’t really change or grow or be even remotely normal. Does it ever get to you?”  
  
“You have it backwards,” he says, with a sympathetic pat to Anders’ forearm. “It’s old people who are stuck, never mingling with kids, clinging to their ways. I’m always learning, always changing, that’s what it means to be young. I wouldn’t trade Baldr for anything.”  
  
“I feel like you just quoted Peter Pan at me.”  
  
“Never saw it,” he says, inspecting his hands with unusual intensity.  
  
“It’s also a book, you know.” Olaf snorts and Anders sits and waits for the pot to kick in, for questions of immortality to be confined to a separate galaxy, and for their conversations to dissolve into equally uniformed debates about the merits of keeping the Queen as the head of state.

“Old Lizzie,” Olaf will inevitably sigh. “You’ll miss her when she’s gone.”  
  
—  
  
Anders opens the door to Mitchell, blood stained and shaking, his clothes a mess and sticking to his skin. His hands are trembling with either adrenaline or fear or maybe something else entirely. He lets him in without a word, and when he finally speaks, it’s Anders’ name he whispers.  
  
“Did you kill someone?” He asks.  
  
Mitchell nods, a single, miserable movement and a few stray tears fall from his eyes, leaving tracks along his cheeks. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t- "  
  
Anders holds up a hand and Mitchell stutters to a stop. “Shower,” he says. “Leave your clothes on the floor, we’ll get rid of them. We can talk once you’re clean.”  
  
Mitchell nods and just as the pipes begin to sing in the wall, Anders pulls vodka from the freezer and drinks directly from the bottle, steadying himself with a hand to the counter. He isn’t used to questioning his moral compass, he always had brothers for that. But this, he thinks, this feels far less alarming than it ought to.  
  
He moves to the bedroom and digs through his drawers for a pair of sweatpants and a dark, thermal shirt before opening the bathroom door. “I’ve clothes for you,” he says. Mitchell answers by shutting off the water, his skin burned pink, as he scrubs at his hair with a towel.  
  
“Thanks,” he whispers.  
  
“Come to the kitchen when you’re done.”  
  
He puts away the vodka, but not without a few lasting drinks, and takes a seat on the bar stool. “So,” he says, pushing down the strange feeling he gets from seeing Mitchell, red rimmed eyes and dripping hair, dressed in his clothes. “Tell me about them.”  
  
Mitchell stands, his arms folded, and looks away. “Please don’t- ” he begins, but Anders shakes his head.  
  
“No, you’re going to tell me about them. You don’t want to talk about it, I know, and I certainly don’t want to listen. But we’re doing it.”  
  
“He was older,” he says, his voice cracking. “I thought I could stop, I always stop with you. I was in a gay club- ”  
  
“Where?” Anders asks. He’ll be sure to check the news in the morning. Perhaps they’ll include a photograph.  
  
“Karangahape Road,” he says. Anders nods for him to continue. “He was easy, and I just. I thought I could do it, I really did. But I- " he takes a shuttering breath. “I don’t really know what happened. I felt his heart stop, and that’s how I came back, to him like that. I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s not me you should be apologising to.”    
  
“No,” he admits. “It’s not. But I’m still sorry.”  
  
“Come on,” he says finally. “Let’s go to bed.”  
  
—  
  
They spend the next two days in various positions of disarray on Anders’ sofa while the television blares reality show reruns and takeout boxes overflow from the coffee table to the floor. They don’t kiss or fuck and Mitchell’s eyes stay wide and brown. Occasionally he reaches for Anders’ arm, a touch of his fingertips, as if to reassure himself.  
  
Anders looks around for the remote and mutes the television. “Alright,” he says. “I’m ready to talk.” Mitchell watches him with red rimmed eyes as he runs a hand through his hair, looking away. “I haven’t always been the best person, okay? I’m not sure if it’s me, or Bragi, or just a terrible combination of the two of us, and really I never cared much before. It wasn’t big stuff, you know?”  
  
“I’m sorry- " he begins, but Anders cuts him off.  
  
“Don’t apologise to me another fucking time, alright? You want to know what bothers me about this? It’s that I’m not particularly bothered. I’m really not. I should be significantly more concerned than I am that you just murdered a man two nights ago. I knew this would happen, I expected it to happen, and honestly I thought I would be horrified. Any normal person would be horrified.”  
  
“Any normal person wouldn’t have tried to find me again,” he says, his voice soft.  
  
“Yes, I’m well aware.” They’re both silent for a moment. Mitchell bites at his lips and Anders watches him from the corner of his eye, a perfect picture of grief. “Have you ever tried to stop?”  
  
Mitchell swallows and looks away, his eyes glazed, as if he’s heard those exact words before, decades ago. “I have, in the past. But usually there’s someone to help me, to set me straight.”  
  
“I can’t be that person.”  
  
“I know,” Mitchell says as he rubs at his eyes, taking deep, shallow breaths.  
  
“Just so long as you remember it.”    
  
“And when I kill again?” His voice cracks.  
  
“We’ll deal with it,” Anders says, hugging a throw pillow to his chest. “One at a time.”  
  
—  
  
“Christ,” he whispers, tracing the edge of Anders’ cheekbone with his fingertip. “I’ll ruin you.”  
  
“Not much to ruin,” he sighs, awake but only just.  
  
“You may not measure up to your brothers, but you certainly don’t match me on a single step. Don’t ever think that.” Mitchell continues to outline the contours of his skin, slipping down to graze the hollow of his throat, the dips in his collarbones. He doesn’t answer, but Anders thinks it might only be a matter of time.  
  
He is already beginning to inch towards Mitchell’s shadow with each day they spend twisted in his sheets. Sometimes he considers an agreement, an arrangement, a body quota for the month instead of accidents that will occur just every once in a while. He can live with it, he knows he can, and while sometimes that makes his stomach churn, often his disgust falters before the line of Mitchell’s shoulders, his wide, dark eyes.  
  
It’s certainly not love but he’ll call it ruin, anyway. At least then they’ll both agree.  
  
—  
  
He’s on his back, gazing up at him, eyes wide as Anders kisses a line up his calf, hoisting his leg higher onto his shoulder. They’re both close, sweat is mingling with the ends of his hair and Mitchell’s eyes fade to black in a slow gradient of colour. It will take very little to push either of them over the edge so he holds out his wrist in offering, panting, but Mitchell shakes his head.  
  
“Don’t need it,” he says, and pushes him back, flipping their positions and swallowing Anders’ laugh in his mouth as he rides him. He plants his hands against his chest and Anders’ head hits the wall and he only just manages to keep himself from whispering Mitchell’s name as he comes.  
  
“See?” He asks, climbing off of his lap and smearing his fingers through the mess between them, his lips against Anders’ collarbone. “Didn’t need it.”  
  
Anders hums but doesn’t answer. He has never been particularly tactful, not when it comes to anything worth saying. Mitchell shifts at his side and dips his tongue into the hollow of his throat, licking his come from Anders’ skin. He knows what he’s doing but he lets it happen, lets him slide his hands beneath his waist and pull him closer. Anders stares up at the ceiling and breathes him in.  
  
—  
  
Anders knows objectively, implicitly, that it’s Bragi who keeps Mitchell in his bed. He’s a screen to project his humanity on, someone he can touch and kiss and fuck that he won’t accidentally kill. Anders forces himself to eat vegetables and he irons his shirts and he wakes groggy and takes his coffee with soya milk and all of these things make Mitchell feel human, even if it’s just for a little while.  
  
He doesn’t mind, he really doesn’t. He imagines it has been this way since Mitchell was twenty-three, that he is just one name in a long list of people used as mirrors in Mitchell’s nimble hands. But sometimes, when he rubs his nose down the line of Anders’ cheek, or when he folds his arms around him and hums into his skin, smiling like he’ll remember this exact moment in years to come, he let’s himself forget all about the blood.  
  
“What’re you thinking about?”  
  
Anders hardly even notices his accent anymore. “A contract,” he says. “New client.”  
  
“That’s not what I wanted to hear,” he murmurs, pressing his lips to his temple.  
  
“And what did you want to hear?” He asks. Anders can feel his breath against his skin but he refuses to turn and face him. Instead he closes his eyes and pictures every crease in his forehead, the edge of his cheekbones, the dark ring of his irises. “Poetry?”  
  
“Nah, I know you’re a shit poet.”  
  
“Better than you, anyway.”  
  
“Low bar.” Mitchell says and he kisses him again.  
  
—  
  
He can’t sleep. Mitchell hardly breathes at all, like a body wrapped in his sheets, still for all but the twitch of his eyelids. Anders watches him, hunched over, chin pillowed on his knees. He knows it’s not rational, that Mitchell’s short lived brush with abstinence is not the reason for his insomnia. But still he doesn’t sleep.  
  
The alarm clock blares half-past three in angry florescent red when Anders reaches out to run his fingers up and down Mitchell’s forearm, mirroring his own habits, something Anders wakes to most nights. His eyes flutter open and Anders pulls his hand away.  
  
“You can’t sleep?” He asks, watching him with heavy eyes.  
  
“It’s fine. I didn’t mean to wake you.”  
  
Mitchell shakes his head and pulls himself up, sitting back against the headboard as he pushes his hair out of his eyes. “Come on,” he says, standing and pulling on a pair of grey track pants before gesturing for Anders to do the same.  
  
“Mitchell,” he begins. “It really is fine, I don’t- " but he’s already reaching for the door.  
  
“I know you keep some camp herbal shit in here,” he says from the kitchen. He is digging through the top cabinet, his shoulders shifting in darkened contrast. He emerges victorious with chamomile tea bags and flicks the switch on the kettle. “Go grab the duvet and some pillows, will you?”  
  
Anders has given up on arguing so he does as he says, depositing the vast majority of their bedding onto the couch. While the water boils, Mitchell lays everything out on the floor and turns on the television, flooding the room with blue and white light. “Lay down,” he says. “Sometimes all you need is a change of scenery and some artistic German film on the telly.”  
  
He brings him tea with too much honey but Anders drinks it anyway as Mitchell settles behind him, propping them both up against a set of pillows. He keeps the volume low, and they sit, silent, watching the shadows more often than the television as Anders breathes over sweetened steam.  
  
He doesn’t remember falling asleep. But when he wakes the sun is high and the television is off and his mug is safely out of reach. “Good morning,” Mitchell whispers into his ear.  
  
“Good morning,” he says back.    
  
—  
  
“Tell me about the first person you killed.” Mitchell watches him with lowered eyes, his expression drawn and Anders bites the rush of guilt like a bullet.  
  
“Why the first?” He asks.  
  
“I figured they’d be the most important.”  
  
“He wasn’t,” Mitchell says, looking away. “You know, most people I’m with, they don’t- " he runs a hand through his hair, pushing it back out of his eyes. Sometimes Anders thinks this is when he is the most beautiful, with his brow pinched and his are eyes glassed over, misery winding his shoulders like a clockwork toy. Maybe that’s why he keeps asking. “They don’t want to know this stuff,” he says, finally. “The past is the past and that.”  
  
“Well it’s not just your past, is it? It’s your present and future too, balance of probability.”  
  
“Why do you want to know?” It passes as a whisper.  
  
“I’m not sure,” Anders says, and it’s one of the most honest answers he’s ever given. He doesn’t know why, curiosity or self defence or something vicious, deep seeded and growing. He wants to know every inch of the monster that shares his bed. “If the first wasn’t the most important, tell me who was.”  
  
“There’s too many to choose from.”  
  
“The first you think of then, one that changed you.” Bragi does nothing to dissuade him, wind chimes echo in his ears.  
  
“The change was gradual.” He is swallowing his discomfort with every gulp of air.  
  
“And if you end up killing me? Would that be important?”  
  
“Anders,” Mitchell whispers, leaning forward to slide his hand against his cheek.  
  
“Well?”  
  
“It would be malignant,” his voice is soft. “If I killed you, it would spread.”  
  
Anders likes the sound of that. Like cancer, he would take over every cell until Mitchell could hear Bragi’s ringing voice just as clearly. “Good,” he whispers against his skin. “That’s good.”  
  
—  
  
Sometimes Mitchell reads to him. His voice is soothing, but it’s his cadence that lulls Bragi to sleep and leaves Anders to listen to the story rather than the words and their tenses and metaphor and rhyme. He knows just where to pause and what to whisper, how to read softly in both grief and joy.  
  
He shoves a bound edition of Chaucer’s poetry into his gloved hands and Mitchell groans, rolling his eyes. “You’re going to make me read Chaucer?”  
  
Anders sprawls out across the bed, stretching tense muscles and watching as he flips idly through weather worn pages with a scowl on his face. “Don’t pretend you’ve ever so much as glanced at Chaucer.”  
  
“Hey,” he says, sitting down beside him, flicking on the lamp. “I had a very active reading life before television was invented.”  
  
“I know they had some trashy shit in the twenties. You’re not fooling anyone. I bet you were into gothic penny dreadfuls.”  
  
“You caught me.” He brushes his fingers through Anders’ hair, his hands cool to the touch. Anders pulls the sheets up over his shoulders in retaliation, tugging at Mitchell’s arm until he lays down beside him.  
  
“Now welcome summer with thy sunne soft,” he says, his breath warm against Anders’ cheek. “Do I at least get a blowjob out of this?”  
  
“You’ll have to wake me up for it,” he murmurs against his chest.  
  
“I have no problems with that.”  
  
—  
  
Anders calls Axl well before he generally wakes, and smiles when he answers with a groggy, “What?”  
  
“Check your email.”  
  
“It’s not even nine.”  
  
“If you woke me up for your fucking quest, I can do the same.” Axl groans and springs shift and creak through the receiver while Anders leans back in his chair, waiting.  
  
“What am I looking at?” He asks, finally.  
  
“The contact information for every wedding-based establishment in Aukland, from planners to bakers, courtesy of Dawn who either thinks I’m planning a massive PR overhaul or a career change.”  
  
Axl snorts. “Anders the wedding planner. Thanks, bro. Hey, you still seeing the guy with the massive cock?”  
  
“Yep. Not sure what that has to do with the Frigg search.“  
  
“Nothing,” Axl says. “I just have an ongoing bet with Zeb, and- "  
  
“Oh fuck off,” he says. “You’ve got your contact info, I will now leave the rest to you and Mike.”  
  
“Tell porno cock I say- "  
  
Anders hangs up, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling, fighting back a smile.  
   
—  
  
It takes nearly fifteen minutes of listening to a news anchor’s monologue on crime rates in South Aukland for Anders to summon the courage to ask the question he’s been dwelling on for days. “When was the last time you drank?” He asks.  
  
Mitchell looks up, slightly startled, his hand still half way out of a bag of crisps. “Why?”  
  
“Because you haven’t bitten me in weeks and I was just- ” he pauses, unsure of what to say. Bragi strains against his lips but he keeps them closed, unconvinced that he feels anything more than a fairly normal amount of concern given their current arrangement.  
  
“You want to know if I’ve been killing people and not telling you about it?”  
  
Anders refuses to look away. “Do you blame me?”  
  
“No,” he sighs. “And no I haven’t - been biting anyone that is. I haven’t felt the need, not yet.”  
  
“Right.” Anders turns back to the television. They are interviewing a soft spoken economist on the Trans-Pacific Partnership while a man with slicked hair nods thoughtfully and pretends to understand his projections.  
  
“You don’t believe me.” It’s not a question.  
  
“You have no reason to lie to me.” The anchor fiddles with his hands too much, he overuses pronouns, his teeth click together when he speaks. “So I believe you.”  
  
—  
  
When it finally happens, Mitchell sobs into his shirt, bone deep gasps and shuttered apologies. He feels nausea, sudden and gripping. There is fevered heat and shaking, the world blurs behind Mitchell’s pale lips.  
  
“I took too much,” he whispers, cupping his face in his hands, smearing blood across his cheeks. “I need to get you to a hospital.”  
  
“No hospital.” He manages to speak without gagging and so he tries again. “Get my phone.” It feels like Bragi is trying to claw through the back of his head. His vision strays to static and suddenly Mitchell is in front of him, mobile in hand, waiting for directions. He forces himself to sit and tests his breathing while Mitchell positions himself against his back.  
  
“I’m so sorry.” he whispers into Anders’ shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry.”  
  
He scrolls through his contacts with shaking fingers until he finds Michelle’s name in painfully bright text. He sets the phone to speaker and lays back against Mitchell’s chest, his eyes closed as he focuses on breathing.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“I need you to come to my flat,” he begins, but something in his voice must give him away. Perhaps he doesn’t sound quite as steady as he thinks because she immediately cuts him off.  
  
“Are you overdosing? Did you really just call me instead of an ambulance, you absolute fuck up?”  
  
“No, no. Blood loss. I can’t go to a hospital, I need you to come here.”  
  
“With a saline drip,” Mitchell adds, his voice echoing through Anders’ temples. “Epinephrine to be safe.”  
  
“What the fuck, Anders?” She snaps. “Who the hell was that? You know what, I don’t want any part in this. I’m calling Mike- ”  
  
“Don’t,” he gasps, his chest heaving. “There was an accident, Michelle. If you could just please bring the stuff and come to mine, we’ll explain everything.”  
  
There is a pause on the other line, and he closes his eyes, the world spinning black. “Fine,” she says finally. “For my curiosity and little else. I’ll be there in a half hour. In the meantime, keep your head elevated. Should I be bringing blood bags?”  
  
“Yes,” Mitchell answers for him. “Just in case.” The line goes dead and Mitchell adjusts his grip, whispering, “Sleep,” into his ear. Anders’ vision is a shower of white noise. He closes his eyes and opens them to a sharp pinch in the back of his hand and Michelle’s firm grip.  
  
“Relax,” she says. “The bad part’s over.” He’s lying in bed, wearing clean clothes and a thermal with one sleeve pushed up past his elbow as Michelle fiddles with a saline line. “So- " she begins, eyeing him expectedly.  
  
“So,” he repeats, his voice broken and rasping.  
  
“Your boyfriend, Mitchell. I sent him out for some things from the pharmacy. What was it you said to me when we first met?”  
  
Despite himself, Anders smiles. “Goddess who swings both ways.”  
  
“Looks like I’m in good company.” She sits beside him and Anders watches her from the corner of his eye.  
  
“You had your suspicions.”  
  
“Yes I did, and I’m happy to have them confirmed. I took comp time for this, you know. So I want to hear all of it.”  
  
Anders groans, looking away from the orange glow of lamp light. “Can’t it wait? I’m recovering from a near death experience.”  
  
“You could’ve, you know,” she says, gazing idly at his bedside table and the stack of paperbacks that obscure his alarm clock. “Died, that is. You should’ve gone to the hospital, not called me.” She pauses to run her finger over the spine of a novel Mitchell had brought home from the library, something old and out of date. “What is he?” Her voice is airy, Anders closes his eyes.    
  
“A vampire, I guess.”  
  
She raises her eyebrows, setting the book back down. “You guess?”  
  
“We never really talked about it. I feel a bit ridiculous even saying it out loud,” he admits, and Michelle smiles.  
  
“Well this certainly explains your sudden interest in blood donation.” He rolls his eyes but her grin only widens. “He really is a stunner, you know. I wouldn’t mind the three of us having a go.”  
  
Anders does seriously consider her offer for a fraction of a second, mainly because he still harbours the notion that Michelle is absolutely wild in bed. “He’s not the type,” he says instead, his voice unfamiliar to his own ears.  
  
“If that man hasn’t had one of every permutation I’ll go down on you right now.”  
  
Anders hums. His mouth tastes of metal and sleep begins to slowly take over as he murmurs, “Ask him yourself, then.”  
  
“Oh, I will,” she promises, standing. “I’ll be by tomorrow to check up on you. And I expect the full story.” Anders doesn’t answer and she shuts the bedroom door behind her.  
  
—  
  
“You have to wake up,” Mitchell hums, gently teasing his fingers through Anders’ greasy hair. “You haven’t eaten all day. I made soup.”  
  
“You don’t make anything,” Anders mumbles into his pillow, sighing at the feel of Mitchell’s fingertips against his scalp.  
  
“Canned soup,” he admits. “Michelle made me buy some yesterday. Lots of salt and sugar.”  
  
“Canned soup is an abomination.” He forces himself up into a sitting position and immediately realises his mistake as his vision shifts and stutters and his pulse pounds in his temples. Mitchell steadies him with frantic hands, setting pillows behind his shoulders and pulling the duvet up across his lap. Mitchell tucks a stray curl behind his ear as he gnaws at his bottom lip with blunt teeth.  
  
“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t even bother.” Anders’ pulse beats like rain against the backs of his eyes, little droplets of black pressure that build and build until his head aches from it. He needs to stay still until he can breathe without his chest collapsing in on itself, not listen to Mitchell wax poetic about his many faults and dangerous shortcomings.  
  
“Anders,” he begins, but he cuts him off with a loud groan.  
  
“I’m serious, Mitchell. I don’t want to hear it. You fucked up, I was too desperate to come to even consider stopping you, we did a bit more damage than intended. Then Michelle saved the day, and really that’s the tragic part in all this. I now owe a very devious woman a very significant favour.”    
  
“She kind of propositioned me, you know,” he says, looking a tiny bit puzzled, enough to make Anders smile.  
  
“Yeah? And what’d you tell her?”  
  
“That I’m gay.”  
  
Anders snorts. “Bet she called your bullshit.”  
  
“No,” he says, tracing a seam in the duvet. “She was really nice, actually. Said it was a shame and then wrote out some instructions should you get a fever or anything. She had no way of knowing, anyway.”  
  
“Yeah, she does. That was Sjöfn, love goddess. If there’s one thing that woman’s equipped with, it’s a gaydar. I’m shocked she didn’t leap all over you. Called you a stunner.”  
  
Mitchell shrugs. “Maybe a love goddess actually respects love when she finds it, then.” Anders stiffens, every muscle pulling tight as his throat ties itself a noose. Mitchell smiles then and runs his fingers lightly down his forearm, tracing up and down like he does at night when he slides into bed moulds himself to the curve of Anders' spine.  
  
“Relax,” he whispers. “Jesus, you’re so young. Love isn’t the enigma you think it is. I’ve been in love dozens of time. None of it lasts forever, none of it is the end of the world. It’s natural, that’s all.” Mitchell is still smiling when he brushes Anders’ bottom lip with his thumb. “It’s just what happens.”  
  
“It doesn’t happen to me,” he says, his voice far less steady than he would like.  
  
“It doesn’t have to happen to you right this minute and it doesn’t have to happen with me. But it will, eventually, I promise you it will. Whether it’s in hours or decades, you’ll fall just like the rest of us.” Mitchell presses a kiss to his forehead. “There really isn’t anything to be afraid of. It’s not forever. Now you need to eat.”  
  
Anders watches him retreat towards the kitchen and thinks that for all of Mitchell’s insight he missed the detail that sits like coal in his throat. Nothing in Anders’ life has ever been forever because that is exactly the way he has always wanted it. He doesn’t fear the chains of domesticity as much as he fears wanting something that never changes. He knows by now just how impossible that is.  
  
—  
  
Michelle takes her due in the form of brand new gossip, whispered to Mike on a downy cloud of pillows, watching his eyes widen with red swollen lips. Anders more or less expects it, so he answers his call on the first ring.  
  
“And how is my eldest brother this morning?” Five days of bedrest and Mitchell reading novels aloud as he sleeps has rekindled a bit of Bragi’s flame and left them both wide awake and admittedly a little stir crazy. He needs to leave his flat, to return to work and sort through ad designs wearing more than just his boxers and one of Mitchell’s questionable yellow tees.  
  
“I think you know exactly how I am.”  
  
“Angry, confused, just a little turned on?”  
  
“Anders,“ he says through gritted teeth. “Do you want to explain to me why Michelle had to come to your flat during her shift to treat what she described to me as acute blood loss?”  
  
“Sounds like she already did all the explaining.”  
  
“You know what I’m going to say.” There’s a note in Mike’s voice that he can’t quite identify, and Anders does his best to ignore Bragi’s whispered insights.  
  
“I imagine you’ll try to talk me out of it and be wildly unsuccessful. It’s not your place to determine who I sleep with, Mike.”  
  
“Like you tried to do with Valerie?”  
  
Anders frowns at his fish tank. Mike does have a point. “She didn’t love you,” he says, finally.  
  
“And this man, this- " he pauses, and Anders knows exactly what word rests on the tip of his tongue. “He loves you?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says, tracing a finger down the glass. “I guess he does.” They are both silent and all Anders can hear is the pipes that sing incessantly in the walls and the soft hum of the water filter. It’s oddly reassuring.  
  
“If it happens again, I’m intervening.”  
  
“Fuck off,” he says, and he hangs up the phone.  
  
—  
  
“Uh, Anders.” Dawn peaks around the corner, wringing her hands together.  
  
“Yeah, it’s alright,” he says, waving her on without looking up from his laptop. “He told me he was bringing Indian.” It’s his first week back and Mitchell has insisted on bringing lunch and subsequently spending the remainder of the afternoon at Anders’ desk, watching him intently as he pokes at pad thai with disposable chopsticks.  
  
“Yeah, it’s not exactly- "  
  
“Nice place.” Mike’s voice is almost aggressively nonchalant and Anders grits his teeth, closing his laptop with a snap. “Though I think I preferred the last one.”  
  
“Dawn,” he says slowly. “Coffee?”  
  
“You don’t - yeah. Alright. I’ll go.” She grabs her coat from the chair, a garish, yellow thing, and shuts the door behind her.  
  
Anders leans back, his hands folded on his stomach, watching as Mike pretends to inspect the drywall. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“Thought I’d check in on you,” he says, not quite meeting his eyes. Confident, self-assured Mike who always has the last word can’t bring himself to even look at him.  
  
“Get the fuck out of here.”  
  
“I want to meet him,” he says, gazing at the wall just beyond Anders’ shoulder.  
  
“Get out,” he repeats, feeling the familiar bite of adrenaline in his numbing fingers. Mike brings out the very worst in him, he unearths the buried childhood resentments, the militant disregard for authority. It all comes rushing back as Mike exhales; the broken toys, the slammed doors, the feel of bark against his fingers, branches of the trees he would climb to escape the floodwaters of their family.  
  
“You don’t have to introduce us,” he continues. “But I want to see him.”  
  
“What, so you can hunt him down?”  
  
Mike nods. “That’s exactly why. I want him to know we have collateral, should anything happen to you.”  
  
Anders raises his eyebrows, leaning forward, his hands flat on the desk. “Really? You’re going to play protective older brother now after you spent four years pretending I didn’t exist?”  
  
“It takes two to play at that,” he snaps. “I didn’t change my fucking mobile number and move into the city. You always knew where we lived.”  
  
“Don’t pull that shit with me,” he says, standing. “You’re Ullr. You couldn’t fucking lose me if you tried. Now get out of here, Mike. I’m not in the mood for your grandstanding.” He hears voices in the hall and static symphonies that set his pulse racing. Bragi is preforming sonnets in double-time.  
  
“Don’t- " he hears Dawn shout, an aborted attempt to keep Mitchell from barreling head first through the door. He is wearing one of Anders’ green button ups with the sleeves rolled back over his too-tight trousers and it makes Anders’ mouth fucking water.  
  
“You’re really wearing that shirt with those gloves, though?” He asks. Mike looks between them, Mitchell frowns.  
  
“My hands were cold.”      
  
Anders won’t call it a sigh of defeat, but it’s certainly beginning to feel that way. He sits back down and watches his brother take in the rather eclectic sight that Mitchell makes, his hair wind swept and his eyes dark, bags of Indian takeout clutched in his hands. “So you must be the last Johnson brother. Michael?”  
  
“Mikkel,” he corrects him.  
  
“I’ll stick with Mike, shall I? Care for curry? I brought enough for Dawn but she appears to have lunch plans so- " He waves a bag in offering.  
  
“No thanks,” he says slowly, glancing back at Anders.  
  
“Suit yourself.” He begins unpacking onto Anders’ desk, sorting containers between them. He pops open a lid and takes a whiff. “This is definitely yours,” he mumbles.  
  
“Don’t make that face,” Anders says, reaching for a fork. “You can barely taste the spinach.”  
  
“I’ll just- " Mike begins, moving towards the door. “I’ll see you later.”  
  
“What,” Anders asks, looking up as Mitchell commandeers Dawn’s chair with quick hands. “You’re not going to call a Thing? Demand my presence at another god awful family meeting?”  
  
“No,” he says, eyes focused on the door knob. “There isn’t much point. It was nice to meet you,” he adds, finally.  
  
“Likewise,” Mitchell answers through a mouthful of butter chicken. Anders slaps his arm and the door clicks shut.  
  
—  
  
“Have you ever left New Zealand?”  
  
Anders watches him suspiciously from over the pages of the book he’s reading. “You know I have.”  
  
“Yeah but I mean _left_ , Anders.”  
  
“I don’t need to. Rest of the world is a fucking basket case. I’m happy where I am.” He turns a page without taking in a single word.  
  
“You haven’t lived until you’ve lived in Greece,” he says with a smile.  
  
“Are you fucking joking? Have you seen their unemployment rates recently? Europe has a serious housing problem right now and homeless people make me uncomfortable.”  
  
Mitchell ignores him, speaks over him, of carved coasts and islands with pebbled beaches, the lingering smell of fish and brine and pine trees that grow from stone. “I’ll take you there sometime,” he says. “To Hydra, maybe Symi. I went in the fifties, stayed in their coloured houses, and a man there told me no two were painted alike so that fishermen could find their way home. I don’t think it’s true, but I always hoped it was. We’ll go back, you’d love it.”  
  
Anders is usually the one whispering easy promises with tidal frequency, easy to swallow and even easier to say. He knows exactly what Mitchell’s wide smile and bright eyes mean, and his promises are not to keep. Anders turns back to his book.  
  
“Sure,” he says. “We’ll go one day.”  
  
—  
  
“Tell me about them.” His head is pillowed on Mitchell’s chest and as he listens to the shift of fabric over his skin he finds himself relieved to hear silence instead of a heartbeat.  
  
“Who?” Mitchell’s lips move against the crown of his head.  
  
“The people you loved.”  
  
“Oh,” he breathes, sounding surprised. His arms tighten around his shoulders and Anders knows very well what he thought he was asking. “There was Josie,” he says. “I fell in love with her when I least expected it. She was tidy and threw dinner parties and made creme brûlée whenever she worried on things she couldn’t fix. She had pet fish too,” he smiles into Anders’ hair. “I’m pretty certain she couldn’t tell them apart but she pretended to.”  
  
Anders wonders if these are normal things to remember about someone you love. They must be, because Mitchell continues with, “The first vampire I fell in love with was named Carl. Nothing ever came of it, but I didn’t mind. He took me to opera houses and explained the stories during intermission, and listened to Chopin like it was the Beatles. He used to collect newspaper clippings of good things, kind things people did for one another.” Bragi can hear the notes of a symphony.  
  
“Is he one of the one’s who made you give up blood for a while?”  
  
He nods. “Using a different method, but yes, he did.”  
  
“Who else?” He asks, his eyes closed once more. As he listens to Mitchell talk of the men and women he's buried, he wonders what he will have to say about him in decades to come.  
  
—  
  
“You never ask me any questions,” Anders says as he idly pokes at a few boiled potatoes with the edge of his knife.  
  
Mitchell eats like a starving man, hardly glancing away from his plate. “What’d you mean? I ask you stuff all the time.” He downs half a glass of stout and wipes the palms of his hands on his jeans.  
  
“I mean invasive personal questions about my past. Like the sort I ask you. And you always answer.”  
  
Mitchell shrugs. “Well I owe you that much, don’t I?”  
  
Anders sets his plate carefully onto the coffee table and zips his track jacket up to his throat, staring resolutely at the wall. He feels something burning in his chest, something toxic and smouldering like black tar.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he says and Mitchell smiles with a hint of something uneasy lingering in the corners of his mouth. He knows where this conversation is going, Bragi recites the script in the back of his head, they exchange their lines, and Anders feels ill.  
  
“If you don’t pick a film I’m going to put on a cooking show.” He says, reaching for the remote. “Specifically, the Great British Bakeoff.”  
  
“Christ no,” Mitchell groans. “I left Bristol for a reason. Give it here, I’ll choose something.”  
  
He tosses the remote in his general direction and pretends not to be anywhere near as bitter as he feels.  
  
—  
  
He wakes to Mitchell’s tongue tracing the edge of his navel, his arms folded under Anders’ lower back, pulling him closer as he continues his way down. He groans as Mitchell licks at the head of his cock, threading his fingers through his mess of curly hair and tightening his hold until Mitchell bobs his head, his tongue flat against him, and hums deep in his throat.  
  
Anders sighs in approval and Mitchell curls his tongue into endless contortions as his hands slip down to his thighs, digging into his skin. In the half light, Mitchell is an exercise in perfection, blues against pale skin with just a hint of silver and he has never seen anything half as beautiful as his lips around his cock. Bragi rings like church bells.  
  
“Faster,” he whispers, and Mitchell complies, steadying him with just a touch and reaching up to press his palm flat against Anders’ stomach. His mind is a haze of chemical absolution and just when his hips begin to stutter and stall, his eyes falling closed of their own accord, Anders realises. He knows without a shadow of a doubt, as he shouts Mitchell’s name, that this is what he wants, all he wants, unchanged and frozen in icy August mornings with dawn fresh against their skin and as he comes, his chest aches.    
  
When his fingers finally loosen on Mitchell’s hair, and he pulls back to press his lips to the skin of Anders’ thighs, a tear slips down his temple and fades into the pillow case. Bragi carves symbols into Anders’ tongue, and Mitchell’s eyes shine like sunlight. “Leave,” he says, his voice shaking and raw.  
  
“What?” Mitchell frowns, pressing a lazy kiss to Anders’ hipbone. His fingers trace up and down his forearm. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Get out?” His eyes burn.  
  
“Anders- "  
  
“Get out,” he repeats, but this time Bragi speaks for him and Mitchell is forced to his feet like a puppet on strings.  
  
“Anders, please don’t.” His eyes are bright and clear and Anders looks away.  
  
“Leave,” he says. Mitchell collects his clothes without a word, circling in the dark for an unwashed pair of jeans and a coat to pull over his flimsy tee and the sky is just beginning to slip into remnants of orange, sickening like street lamps, by the time he's finished. Once the front door snaps shut, Anders reaches for the ashtray on his bedside table and hurls it against the wall. It falls to the floor in a shower of glass and ash. He bites at his lips to keep any sound from escaping the desperate hollow of his mouth. Bragi stays notably silent.  
  
—  
  
He spends a glorious twenty-four hours downing sambuca from the corner store and watching his patterned ceiling swim above him, tidal waves of plaster. Dawn calls at lunch and he picks up the phone in a fit of drunken confidence, informing her that he plans to take the week off.  
  
“You can’t just - what the hell, Anders? Do you know how many meetings you have scheduled this week?”  
  
“Loads, I’m sure. You can postpone.”  
  
“I cannot postpone! Are you at home? Where’s Mitchell?”  
  
Anders closes his eyes and listens for Bragi’s whispering voice though he can hardly hear it, everything sounds miles away. “I’m taking the week off Dawn, and you can either do your fucking job or take the week off as well. I really don’t give a shit. Fuck my brother or something, he certainly could use it- " The dial tone hums in his ear.  
  
He closes his eyes to dactylic pentameter and opens them to his buzzer ringing. “I’m going to use the key if you don’t let me up,” Ty’s voice crackles static through the speakers.  
  
“Use the key then, you prick,” he shouts from the sofa, knowing full well that Ty can’t hear him.  
  
He comes with the ingredients for pesto. It was the first dish Ty ever learned to make, and Anders was the first to test it out. He declared it the best pasta sauce ever attempted with a flourish of hands and a mouth full of basil and ever since then it’s nearly the only thing Ty makes him. He hardly minds.  
  
“You’ve moved your food processor,” he says, opening cabinets and tearing out the contents one by one while Anders remains sprawled across the couch, his arm flung over his eyes.  
  
“Bottom left,” he says. “Next to the oven.”  
  
He hears the sound of cutlery and the patter of Ty’s knife against the cutting board and Anders thinks he might just fall asleep like this until Ty finally speaks. “You gonna tell me what happened?”  
  
“Nothing happened.”  
  
“No? Then where’s Mitchell?”  
  
“I told him to leave.”  
  
“Why?” Ty is leaning over him when he finally opens his eyes, a dish towel tossed over his shoulder.  
  
“Because I wanted him gone.” Ty nods like he understands, Anders swallows what little pride he has left because when he looks at him, for the briefest of seconds, he sees the boy who would draw pictures while Anders read _Treasure Island_ , who would dream of gold and sand and far off worlds. “I hate this.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ty agrees. “It’s shit, isn’t it?”  
  
“Does it ever stop?”  
  
“No, it only gets worse.”    
  
“I’m not fully convinced that’s possible.”  
  
Ty pats him on the shoulder, and returns to the kitchen. “It is. Trust me, Anders. There are two things in all the world I know more about than you do- ”  
  
“Don’t say it,” Anders groans into a throw pillow.  
  
“Love and fridge repair.”  
  
—  
  
He needs a change of scenery, so Anders lifts a full bottle of wine from Mike’s bar and sits at a corner table, his feet propped up on the bench.  
  
“It’s eleven in the morning,” Mike says, watching him with folded arms. Sometimes Anders cannot fathom their shared genetic code because his sound, arbitrary morals make Anders’ head swim with disgust and just a hint of confusion.  
  
“Don’t worry,” he says, gesturing to the bar. “You’ve got more than enough to last me until the proper pubs are open.” Mike mutters under his breath and Anders resists the urge to tell him to go fuck himself, lest he take offense and actually shove him out the door. Instead he drinks to stay silent and Mike cleans the floors and pretends he isn’t there.  
  
It’s a half decent arrangement until Axl strides in like the giant he is and drags a chair over from a nearby table.  
  
“Ah,” Anders begins, raising his glass. “The Ghost of Christmas Present.”  
  
Axl smiles with a shake of his head. “You’re wasted.”  
  
“Just a tad. Glass?” Axl waves him off and Anders shrugs.  
  
“Ty told me you broke up with your boyfriend.”  
  
Anders wants to correct him but it seems trite, at this stage. Axl smiles like he knows exactly what he’s thinking. Understanding is an odd look on him. “Right,” he begins. “I’m not here long, I have class today, actually. I just wanted to tell you that it’s too late for all the shit you’re afraid of. Like, if you’re already at the drinking in the morning phase, your plan to avoid caring about anyone at all is already sheets to the wind. So you might as well man up and call him.”  
  
“This pep talk sounds like it might come from experience.”  
  
Axl’s fingers tap an unsteady rhythm against the table. “Yeah, kind of. The difference is, Gaia has a hipster fucking art major for a boyfriend now and that weird bloke you’re fucking is probably pining because for some reason people like you.”  
  
“I’m remarkable in bed.”  
  
He laughs. “Just sober up and get your shit together and call him, because frankly, there’s only room for one tragic love story in this family and it’s definitely mine.”  
  
“What about Mike’s failed marriage and that time Ty almost froze Dawn to death?”  
  
“Yeah? Alright, fine. There’s only room for one happy ending in this family, and it’s probably yours. So stop being such a whiny prick and do something about it. I’ll see you later.”  
  
He watches him go and thinks that despite their collective personality disorders and questionable parenting methods, Axl turned out alright. Mike is leaning over the bar, hands clasped around a mug of stout. “Don’t even think about taking any credit for him,” he says. “You and Ty were useless.”  
  
“Excuse me,” he mumbles around the rim of his glass. “Who was it that gave him the sex talk? I have always been a brilliant role model.” He must be twice as drunk as he feels, because for a second he thinks he sees Mike smile.  
  
—  
  
There isn’t an epiphany. Not when he wakes to a clean coffee pot or when he falls asleep to cold sheets. Not when he arrives home from work with the lights off or when he orders saag aloo with extra spinach or when Ty brings lunch in white paper bags. Instead he finishes off his pride in a single swallow while sitting with his ankles crossed and his head tilted back, considering his bookshelf. He reaches for his phone instead.    
  
“Anders,” Mike says. He hears talking in the background, distant chatter. For a moment he can’t bring himself to speak, but it appears he doesn’t have to. “You want to know where he is?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“A converted housing estate in Otara,” he sighs. “I’ll text you the address.”  
  
It takes him the better part of forty minutes to find his flat in the bloc of identical, flimsy homes built along dusty, overgrown gardens. He knocks twice and steps back, his hands deep in his trouser pockets. Mitchell answers the door wearing a vest top and his green fucking gloves and Anders very nearly rolls his eyes.  
  
Instead he looks away, glancing down the sullen street. “You were right,” he says. “This is a total shit hole.”  
  
Mitchell leans against the door frame but makes no move to invite him inside. “Now you know why I prefer your place,” he says, his arms folded and his tone neutral and Bragi rattles away in the back of his head.  
  
“Want to spend the night there, then?” He asks, knowing very well it’s a stretch.  
  
“You going to kick me out at four in the morning if I do?”  
  
“No,” he says, and it’s as close to an apology as he’ll ever give. “You can stay until - whenever.”  
  
“Whenever?” He asks. “I guess I can work with that.”  
  
“Good,” Anders says, stepping back. “Then I’m getting out of here because the suburbs weird me out. I’ll see you tonight. And you better change before showing up at my flat. This is a fucking travesty,” he gestures vaguely at Mitchell’s torso.  
  
“As you wish.” Anders flips him off and Mitchell closes the door with a startling laugh.  
  
—  
  
Anders doesn’t try to explain and Mitchell doesn’t ask. Instead he kisses him, smiling against his lips and breathing him in. He isn’t sure what to do about the stone that weighs down his lungs and makes his heart rush in adrenaline heaves and for a moment he feels like running.  
  
“Relax,” he whispers. “I get it.” He doesn’t though, he can’t possibly, not a man who has loved countless times through countless little lives and who remembers his partners’ favourite foods and the places they hid as children. He cannot possibly understand any of this and yet he makes it look so easy.  
  
“It’s not forever,” Anders says.  
  
“No,” Mitchell agrees. He tilts his chin up, inspects him like a painting. “Not forever. But then, nothing is.”  
  
—  
  
It’s raining when Mitchell whispers into his ear, “Stay home today.” He follows it with a breathy, “Please,” that makes Anders’ eyes flutter open to the rain drops that stain his window silver and white.  
  
“If I miss any more work I’ll have to give Dawn a raise.”  
  
“Give her a raise anyway,” he says, running his hands down Anders’ shoulders. “She deserves it.”  
  
He rolls him over and kisses him, his eyes open and bright in the morning light and Anders feels like he’s cupping water in his hands, keeping him here. “I’ll go in late,” he agrees. “Very late. When the rain stops.”  
  
Mitchell looks down at him with half-lidded eyes. “I’ll go with you.” He says.  
  
Anders hopes that it’ll rain for days, that the streets will flood and overflow and this island alone will remain.  
  
—  
  
“Alright,” Anders begins, pouring himself a glass of vodka while Mitchell stands by the door, his hands in his coat pockets. Mike watches him from behind the bar, it’s a look he recognises and Anders avoids his gaze. “We’re only going to do this once, then we’re never going to talk about it again. Everyone, this is Mitchell, we are exclusively fucking.”  
  
“So you’re dating,” Ty says, grinning around the lip of his beer bottle.  
  
“And,” he continues loudly, ignoring him. “We shall be exclusively fucking for the foreseeable future. I should also mention- "  
  
“We definitely already knew that, bro,” Axl says, his head pillowed on his arms as he sits sprawled across a low table. “This is news to absolutely no one.”  
  
Anders sighs. “Could you stop interrupting me? I have marginally relevant additional information to add, namely that Mitchell isn’t mortal, so feel free to spout your secrets when he’s around.” Olaf, who had been slowly creeping towards Mitchell with steady, half steps, leans over and inhales loudly over Mitchell’s shoulder.  
  
“Alright?” Mitchell asks, turning to look at him with his eyebrows raised.    
  
“I’d say I know what you are.”  
  
“Grandpa,” Mike begins. “Maybe it’d be best if we let- ”  
  
“You’re a vampire, aren’t you?”  
  
Mitchell smiles with sunlit eyes. “I am. Did you smell that on me? I have to say that might be the first time that’s ever happened. I thought I was running out of firsts, at this stage.”  
  
The bar erupts in an uproar with Mike shouting for their brothers to shut the fuck up while Axl laughs hysterically and Ty stalks towards him with an icy look and a sharp, “He’s had lunch with Dawn. I’m going to knock your fucking teeth out, Anders.”  
  
“Well he didn’t have Dawn for lunch now did he?” Anders asks, stepping back before Ty can make good on his promise.  
  
“Wait,” Axl begins. “Are we being serious, here? Like an actual vampire?”  
  
“Sadly yes,” Anders says.  
  
“Sadly?” Mitchell asks, playing offended but he can see the smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.  
  
“They’re not very nice, vampires.” Olaf says, nodding pensively. “But neither is Anders.”  
  
“Oh fuck off.”  
  
“But really?” Axl asks, standing. “A legit fucking vampire?”  
  
“Mitchell,” Anders sighs, waving his hand in permission.  
  
“Want to see my party trick?” He turns to Axl with black eyes and bulging canines and his little brother nearly shouts with joy at the sight.  
  
“That is fucking awesome, mate.”     
  
Mike clears his throat and Anders’ hand clenches around his glass. “I think you’re leaving out a rather crucial part of this story, don’t you?”  
  
“No,” he says sharply, turning to face him. “I don’t.” Mike stares him down, and for a moment it seems like he’s ready to spill all of their bloody secrets from his traitorous fucking lips but Olaf is already dragging Mitchell over to the bar, his hand steady on his shoulder.  
  
“The sixties, they were something else, weren’t they?”  
  
“I spent the start of it in Geneva,” he says, and Olaf nods approvingly.  
  
“Leave it, Mike,” he whispers. “Please.” It is the first and only time he will ever say anything of the sort. It works, at least for now. With one last searching look, Mike turns towards the stairs and bids them all goodnight.  
  
“Don’t dry the place up, if you can manage.”  
  
“No promises,” Axl shouts after him.  
  
—  
  
He sleeps for an entire afternoon, dreaming of little things, snippets of _Othello_ , of snow that turns to sleet and rooms of maps and telescopes. He opens his eyes to Mitchell’s soft laughter and he responds with a weak slap to his chest. “You woke me up.”  
  
“You were talking,” he says. He’s already dressed in layers to combat the cold, a pair of Anders sweatpants sitting low on his hips, far too short for him. He smiles at the sight, distracted.  
  
“Was it Shakespeare?” He asks. Bragi must be restless, frustrated with Anders unusual display of the mundane. Poets always did so hate domesticity.  
  
“Must’ve been, for all I could get out of it. I was thinking of doing a quick food shop. Interested?” He hums and closes his eyes as Mitchell runs his hands through Anders’ hair, combing it back with his fingers. “Or would you rather sleep?”  
  
“I’d much rather sleep,” he agrees, turning to wrap himself tighter in the duvet. Bragi murmurs monologues, _fix most firm thy resolution._  
  
“Then I’ll be back.” He presses a kiss to his hand and Anders doesn’t have the energy to tease him about it.  
  
“Beer and chocolate,” he groans, slightly muffled by his pillow.  
  
“Beer and chocolate,” he agrees and shuts the door behind him.  
  
—  
  
“You know, I probably wouldn’t have encouraged you if I knew he was a fucking vampire,” Ty says, taking a swig of beer and kicking his feet up onto Anders’ desk.  
  
“Yeah I figured that.” He says, nudging Ty’s shoes away from his plate with his elbow.  
  
“He’s not going to be suspicious that you’re eating dinner in the office?”  
  
“Oh he definitely knows we’re gossiping, but I seriously doubt he cares.”  
  
Ty shrugs. “Right. Well, I had loads of questions for you, and now I’m actually not sure I want any answers. I mean, he seems an alright bloke and I think that’s about enough information for me.”  
  
“Wise decision, little brother.” Anders stands, stretching his arms above his head. “Surely that’s not the last of it,” he says, glancing at the empty carton of beer left abandoned next to his desk. “Hopefully there’s more in the fridge.”  
  
“Are you over all that flighty shit?” Ty calls through a mouthful of chips as Anders inspects the back room for leftover alcohol.  
  
“Who knows,” he says, setting a bottle down in front of Ty and twisting one open for himself. “Why is it none of you have any fucking commitment issues? You, Mike, and Axl are the fucking poster boys of jumping into things. Christ, you lot. It’s like you all forgot about our parents abandoning us.”  
  
“No, we just got over it. You pretended to not be bothered in the first place. Shitty coping mechanism, that,” Ty says, tilting his bottle in Anders’ direction.  
  
“That’s because I wasn’t bothered. They were fucking cunts, the both of them. And it’s not like they did any parenting when they were around.” Ty looks like he wants to disagree but Anders ignores him. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You were Mum’s favourite, kiddo. You got the experience we didn’t. Besides, one out of four is hardly a job well done.”  
  
Ty doesn’t argue. He sips at his beer and he watches him. “I’m sorry,” he says, finally.  
  
Anders waves him off. “Don’t be an idiot.”  
  
“I didn’t want- “  
  
“Then change the subject, Ty.” He prefers not to dwell on things he cannot change. That, he thinks, came with Bragi, along with the insomnia.  
  
“How’d you meet? Mitchell,” he clarifies and Anders rolls his eyes. “No offence Anders but you’re kind of a cowered. I can’t see you knowingly getting involved with a monster.”  
  
For a very brief moment he considers telling the truth. The idea passes nearly as soon as it comes. “We met in a club,” he says. “And I took him home with me.”  
  
“Typical.”  
  
“I was ordering him around a bit,” he continues. “Telling him exactly how to suck my cock and needless to say he was very interested in how I- "  
  
“Jesus,” Ty groans, but he’s smiling.  
  
“Who needs to be tied up when you have Bragi to keep you in check? So really I’m like a sex fantasy come true for him. My orders come built in. He’s entirely submissive, you know. It’s quite remarkable, considering he’s a vampire. Would kneel at my feet all day if I- ”  
  
“Yeah alright,” he says, setting an empty bottle down on the table. “Good chat. Good uh, family catch up.”  
  
“Oh? You’re out of questions? I’ve satisfied your raging curiosity?”  
  
“You’re a dick, Anders,” he says.  
  
He smiles and blows him a kiss as he heads for the door.  
  
—  
  
“Do you ever wish you were a better person?” Mitchell’s voice is hoarse and heavy with sleep, his skin dark against the sheets. He always looks stunning like this, just before dawn, with lowered lashes and tired eyes while Anders buttons his shirt and straightens his tie.  
  
“No,” he says. Mitchell holds out a hand and Anders takes it, sitting beside him. He tries to pull him down, bring him back to the sleepy warmth of the duvet but Anders only smiles and shakes his head.  
  
“I’ve work,” he says.  
  
“That is the worst excuse, you know. You’re always late.”  
  
Anders hums into the kiss. “Except I gave the Dawn the week off, remember?” He stands, straightening the creases from his trousers, fixing his hair. It’s an odd feeling, leaving someone at home and knowing where they’ll be when he gets back.  
  
“You really don’t?” Mitchell whispers.  
  
“No,” he says. “I really don’t.”  
  
Mitchell is out of bed in seconds, kissing him with long, lingering swipes of his tongue, his hands cupping Anders’ cheeks. He pulls back, his eyes searching. “You know I gave up on this a long time ago. I thought the rule was to find someone better than yourself, find someone who will put you right.”  
  
“I’m not- ” he begins, but Mitchell cuts him off, kissing him.  
  
“No, you’re not,” Mitchell murmurs against his lips. “And Christ, Anders, I love you for it.”  
  
—  
  
He never once tells Mitchell that he loves him. What use is the God of Poetry if even he cannot put words to something so very fundamental? It takes up too much space in Anders’ chest so instead he returns his kisses in the morning and he writes unfinished sentences with his fingertips on the plane of Mitchell’s back.  
  
“Where’re you going?” He mumbles as Mitchell shifts under him, manoeuvring Anders onto the mattress.  
  
“Crisps. I’m starving.” Mitchell parades through his flat gloriously naked and the sight is nearly enough to distract him from the bag that he carries, half hidden, back to bed.  
  
“Mitchell,” he groans into the pillow. “You’re going to make everything smell of salt and vinegar.”  
  
“It’s all in your head,” he insists, sliding beneath the sheets.  
  
It is not all in Anders’ head. “You’re disgusting.”  
  
“You’re jealous,” he says with a wicked grin. “I eat how you would if it weren’t for your sad, fragile, mortal body.”  
  
“You love this sad, fragile, mortal body.”  
  
Mitchell’s breath smells of chemical sodium, but Anders forgives him when he presses his lips to his collar bone, lapping at the hollow of his throat. “Oh I do.”  
  
He is a mess of salt and sweat and unkempt hair, but when Anders looks down at him Bragi goes silent and his lungs ache and when he pulls him up for a kiss he thinks he finds the words without any help at all. Mitchell’s love may span from acceptance, but he thinks love must be what he’s known all his life, the one lesson he learned in childhood that he did his very best to forget. What is love if not wanting someone to stay?  
  
“You taste like distilled onions.”  
  
Mitchell laughs, his forehead resting against Anders’ own. “My poet and his way with words.”  
  
“Fuck off, John.”


End file.
